Evaluating Encompass to the work of Yoshimura’s contemporaries helps make clear the individuality of the Japanese composer’s imaginative and prescient. Within the Nineteen Eighties, Steve Roach and Michael Stearns constructed interplanetary fantasies, Budd & Eno’s The Pearl turned new-age reverberations into legendary desires, and Ambient 4: On Land was darkish and moody, crammed with atmospheric intrigue. Yoshimura’s work is way extra right down to earth, unconcerned with imagining new locales. In “Inexperienced bathe,” a woodwind-like melody trickles down like rain, touchdown in a pool of rippling synths. When a higher-pitched tone arrives, it does so with the heat of a solar breaking the horizon. Conjuring total landscapes out of some meager layers of sound, Yoshimura appears to encourage listeners to focus their senses and spot how a lot music already surrounds us.

For many years, Yoshimura wrote down his ideas about music in notebooks. Maybe most insightful was when he mused, “My music isn’t mine, however the sounds which aren’t mine are additionally my music.” As John Cage had with 4’33”, Yoshimura discovered that something might be compositional materials, that he was a mere participant within the universe’s collective symphony. That is particularly obvious on his albums incorporating subject recordings, like 1986’s GREEN or 1993’s Moist Land, however comparable concepts additionally animate Encompass. On “Water planet,” glistening synths intermittently seem, one notice at a time—typically providing a semblance of melody, however largely simply glowing amid diaphanous drones. The tune resembles an vital precursor to environmental music: suikinkutsu, a Japanese backyard decoration the place water droplets echo inside jars.

Music this tender appears like a beneficiant embrace. That’s the prevailing impression of Encompass’s 11-minute centerpiece, “Time forest.” Its synths oscillate with out pause, tremolo pulses in fixed movement. Midway by, deep synthesizer chimes supply a welcome sense of stability amid the comfortable tumult. “Serenity may be the supreme music I’m aiming at,” Yoshimura as soon as mentioned. He wasn’t endorsing escapism; he detested rock’n’roll for pursuing simply that. His music as a substitute prized hyper-awareness of 1’s environment. Even his friends making kankyō ongaku couldn’t fairly attain this cautious stability. At occasions, their works might be too dramatic, or depart one drifting aimlessly. With Encompass, every new improvement is important, and its quietude is a website for energetic engagement.