In late 2015, Japanese composer (and architect…) H.Takahashi (birdFriend, Constellation Tatsu, Not Not Fun) released the second volume of Where To Now? Records’s ‘Where To Be’ ambient cassette tape series. As the label writes, “Contributing artists were given a brief to create works of total ambience, incorporating the idea that the power of the music presented is in that which is barely there.” Hear Takahashi’s misty exploration here, and then stream his new full-length LP collection for Where To Now?, Raum, below.
In my head, I hear “raum” as “roam,” befittingly, as these pieces were composed using Garage Band on an iPhone while Takahashi wandered around his home town of Tokyo. As Where To Now? writes, “[the iPhone] is no gimmick, rather a conscious decision which allows Takahashi to constantly create ‘on the go’ without the constraints of space.” The phone also lets him interpret and respond to environments without the unavoidable spectacle created by gear, and to be at once fully present while creating, privately, in public. To an observer, he could be texting, scrolling through social media, or otherwise absorbed. This mysterious naturalism is so much of what makes Raum feel like perfect “music to work to, to sleep to, to help us find a sense of space and oneness within a world that is increasingly wild and untameable.”