Released
April 1995 / July 2023
- One of Hosono's electronic masterpieces gets its first vinyl release.
- Haruomi Hosono has produced so much music over the past six decades that he often can't remember much about making it. In his early musical pursuits, the Japanese legend committed himself to creating "sightseeing music," and exhibited the curiosity of an idealistic nomad in his exploration of exotica, psychedelic folk, J-pop, Eastern music and ultimately, later in life, ambient and electronica. As a former member of two career-defining Japanese bands, Happy End and Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), his early and mid-career works retained the imprint of his lifelong love for American music. Lesser known in his catalogue are the dense and world-building ambient techno records he released in the '90s and early '00s—a time when he collaborated with the likes of Japanese experimentalists Tetsu Inoue and Miharu Koshi, and worked with vital names in the burgeoning illbient scene, such as Bill Laswell and The Orb.
Recent reissues have begun calling attention to the solo work following his 1984 departure from YMO. In the '90s, Hosono started his own Daisyworld label, which signaled his entrance into the abstract haze of his most adventurous electronic music production. N.D.E., a 1996 sojourn through ambient, trance and tabla rhythms, was the pinnacle of this musical era, though it would also ultimately close his solo explorations within it. "Ambient represented a musical and psychological reset for me," he told RA in 2018. "As the new millennium dawned and the 21st century began, that period of reset ended."
N.D.E. is by turns swampy, deliriously haunting, transcendent and contemplative. Its textural makeup is complex, joining the bleeping psychedelia of Hosono's 1978 album influenced by his trip to India, Cochin Moon, the spacious ambient and acid house of 1993's Medicine Compilation From The Quiet Lodge (on which he paired up with ambient legend Laraaji) and the uplifting New Age pop of his 1995 project Love, Peace & Trance. N.D.E. features a genre-defying cabal of collaborators, including house pioneer François K, Yasuaki Shimizu—an innovator within sparse electropop—and Laswell, who lent his smoke trails of '90s dub to the record.
The album sounds like it could have easily been put out today, especially considering modern electronic music's fixation on mid-'90s nostalgia. The album is best appreciated with headphones, as percussion snakes from one ear to the next, and more delicate sounds come to life through insect chatter or the faintest chime. On "Spinning Spirits," whispered consonants glitch and blur, while tabla rhythms, speaking to Hosono's love for Indian composition, flit in and out like a mosquito suddenly finding its way near an ear before being swiftly swatted away.
Eastern influences flood the album on tracks like "Higher Flyer," across which a wooden flute trills and moans, chants coast round, walloping drums and a cloud of New Age stardust settles. These pathways of calm turn into a triumphant finish when, on "Edge Of The End," mallets drop from the sky onto massive taiko drums. Earlier on the LP, Arun Bagal's eerie violin wisps give "Strange Attractor" a funereal resonance, and a nu jazz-like cacophony of squeaking and twisting acoustic and electronic instruments joins. Ultimately, it is all gracefully usurped into bouncy progressive house.
Other sections of N.D.E make clear why Hosono's '90s and '00s works are often likened to albums from ambient techno greats like The Orb. "Navigations" ushers the album's tropical opening moments into 4 AM dancing territory with its sludgy, timeless trance. But even the album's functional cuts retain the muggy environment of N.D.E's more liberated regions. Amid the abundant bleeps and bloops are high-pitched tongue trills and tangles of percussion that lasso bleating horns.
When the album's activity recedes, the busyness passes over to unveil calm, verdant land. The spacey dub of "Teaching Of Sphinx" underlies the all-consuming reverberations of what sounds like church bell chimes recorded from great heights. Carrying the playful energy of Hosono's 1986 album, Video Game Music, "Heliotherapy"'s arpeggios are bright, airy and bursting with life. Closing the album is one of Hosono's most beatific accomplishments—"Aero," home to winding violin, distant bird cries and cotton-candy sweet melodies fit for a music box.
Hosono's interest in releasing solo electronic albums after N.D.E. might have declined, but his influence was certainly felt across the electronic music world. His Daisyworld imprint was home to releases from Mixmaster Morris, Atom Heart and Jonah Sharp. In the early '00s, he would debut the sweetly sung, nostalgic electronica of his collaboration with his former YMO bandmate Yukihiro Takahashi, Sketch Show. The music he made and championed in his later years materialised his insatiable curiosity for all manner of sounds, resulting in a gorgeously textural meeting of ambient, drone, deeply melodic electronica and Easterns sounds that proved his genius in producing timeless and enticing sound collages, regardless of genre.
Tracklist01. Spinning Spirits
02. Navigations
03. Teaching Of Sphinx
04. Strange Attractor
05. Heliotherapy
06. Higher Flyer
07. Edge Of The End
08. Aero