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Kankyō London presents Yumiko Morioka: Resonance | Music for Rest Rooms.
Yumiko Morioka's album Resonance is regarded as a classic of the Japanese kankyō ongaku style of the 1980s. It merges the ideas of that era with Satie's simple piano phrasings and Brian Eno's ambient
minimalism, and rather than the synth textures or natural sounds usually associated with that genre, the music focuses on the space between the carefully chosen notes, as a representation of the Japanese
concept of 間 (ma). The album was reissued by the Métron record label in 2020 – and when interviewing Morioka at that time for his radio show, Nick Luscombe was astonished to learn that she had never performed the album live. Soon after, Nick, together with his MSCTY Studio co-producer James Greer, convinced her to perform the music live for the first time, and accompanied her in new reinterpretations of it, presented in Thailand and Japan. This concert marks the first time that music from Resonance has
been performed live outside of Asia.
Alongside the selections from Resonance, they will present the European premiere of their new project Music for Rest Rooms, created as part of the Sonic Minds project in collaboration with Thai cultural hub,
Wonderfruit. The work imagines a new type of public space where considered sound offers containment, decompression, or gentle reorientation. Based on the power of multisensorial memory to evoke a sense of peace and rest, the work plays on a series of experiences the trio shared in a remote part of Gunma prefecture, Japan, presenting music as impression, feeling, moment, and scent. The first track from the
album to be previewed, Hanayagi, is already receiving airtime and
attention, including on BBC Radio 6 Music.
Special guest artist Notep also features.
