The digital file edition comes with a 24-page booklet in PDF, revised in 2023.
Preface
In situ
Most of the objects and environments in our daily life are made for some purposes and are given the role.
Even most of the 'natural world' that we encounter in our daily life is being converted for our convenience, or is at least in a converted environment, or is abandoned aſter fulfilling its role.
If those objects and environments are used in a totally different manner or put in a totally disconnected situation from their intended role, the concreteness will be extremely apparent and a 'parallel world' will appear.
This method was investigated by many surrealists in the early twenties, and is also well established as 'musique concrète' within music history.
Even though I use the same method, I am more interested in entering 'parallel world' through action, to experience a 'molecular communication' with the objects and environments through all my senses, rather than to make the 'parallel world' appear.
If I dare say, the purpose is to summon a 'primal world' from 'nature' that is filled with the swirling energy of the elements, such as water, fire, wind, earth, and void, through 'molecular communication'.
Such nature is oſten considered to be an imaginary product in a utopia which doesn't actually exist. However, since it is based on concrete matters in daily life, it should more accurately be called 'crucial reality'.
The expression 'crucial reality' may evoke the cruelty of reality. However, when I enter into reality through 'molecular communication', I feel that the 'primal world', which is woven with elemental energies, is incredibly beautiful. Therefore I accept it rather as the 'crucial beauty of reality'.
Although the beauty always exists everywhere, it is quite difficult to feel it in daily life, since it is covered by the showy brightness of practicality. It is similar to the fact that we cannot see beautiful stars in the daytime.
The 'crucial beauty of the reality' is omnipresent in daily life. Is it useless to record the action, to summon it into the sensuous world? At least, there is no useless matter in this 'crucial reality' that is released from the spell of practicality.
Gorgeously packaged, gorgeous dronemusik!
Hitoshi Kojo is a Japanese sound artist and drone-centric expressionist who has recorded in the past under the moniker Spiracle and performs in the jubilantly psychedelic but still quite droned-out project Juupala Kaapio.
Omnimoment is a collection of edits from Kojo's sound installations and site-specific work dating from 2006 - 2009, all of which extract and manipulate elemental forces of wind, fire, water, metal, wood, sand, etc. into blossoming thrums of sublime minimalism which run parallel to the works of Andrew Chalk, Loren Chasse, and John Grzinich.
"Shiranui" was originally conceived at the MoKS residency program in Estonia, sourced mostly from the blades of an abandoned Soviet turbine left inexplicably out in the countryside. Kojo extracts pensive, metallic overtones from those blades that sound more like an ancient gong than some hulking industrial machine; and he amasses those sounds into semi-melodic phrases and ritualized acoustic dronings that Organum mastered in the mid-'80s.
"Sea Migration" is an excerpt from an installation involving a feedback system and a bunch PVC pipes that hung from the top window of Germanic castle, looking sort of like a weird plastic octopus playing the part of Rapunzel. Those pipes captured the sound of the wind and the various frequencies of that feedback system creating a tactile, generative composition of pure tones and haptic events not too far from those far more composed works from Andrew Chalk's once prolific project Ora.
The last three tracks demonstrate Kojo's ongoing strategies involving found objects through a process which he calls 'molecular communication' where extended vibrations and dense beds of accreted drone broadcast outward from Kojo's scraped metals, clinked glass, and rubbed sand.
There's definitely some type of alchemy at work in Kojo's sound design, with mysterious energies transforming the commonplace into something sublime, otherworldly, or divine.
Aquarius Records
A beautifully packaged set of five soundscape pieces, “Omnimoment …” is a compilation of sound works originally made as installations or live installations dependent on the objects found in or around the locations where they were recorded, mixed with the natural environmental sounds of those locations. This is a document made with a great deal of love and care. Each track is accompanied by an explanation of how it was made, the sound sources used to produce the sounds we hear in it and the location where it was made. The locations include Barcelona, a castle in Germany, a lake site in Estonia and a couple of venues in New York.
“Shiranui” sets the pace with a slow, calm drone created from a metal cylinder found in a barn at the lake site. Kojo surmises that the object might once have been a turbine but it, like the other objects used on the recording, is being used for something other than what it was originally designed for and that’s part of the theme of this album: to use objects in a way other than the object’s narrowly defined, specialised role for which it was created and in doing so, open up human minds and hearts to an alternative parallel world. “Sea Migration” is just a little faster but has a murky air with a hint of sea-salt smell and a breezy ambience that could be mistaken for soft digitalised noise with a bit of drone.
“Sunshine Erosion” is a beautiful piece created on a surprising mixture of junk metal, kitchen supplies, plastic tube, a tuning fork and objects picked up at the beach; its sound is not too far off in mood from Fennesz during his “Endless Summer” period and if it were a bit softer and muted around the edges it might even slip into Touch label territory. The ambience is warm, relaxed and serene but there is enough sharp edge to the work to move it away from sentimentality.
The last two tracks “Star Grazing / Seeding Planets”, using a mix of kitchen supplies, glass and metal objects, and traffic noise ambience, are static fragile pieces of droning wonder; the latter track is a bit stronger and more whining. The mood is very benevolent and tranquil, and one has a vision of the universe and its maker as essentially benign and looking favourably on the germination of life across the galaxies: a very pleasant counter-balance to the visions of the universe as indifferent or downright hostile to humans that this reviewer often encounters in several genres of music.
Each piece has visual documentation which can be viewed on the links that Kojo has given in the booklet that accompanies the album. Some people may query why Kojo didn’t just release the set in DVD format rather than as CD and one can argue the pros and cons of releasing these tracks on DVD against the pros and cons of releasing the same in CD format. There is value in seeing the music being made as it goes but this can detract from the actual product itself; there’s also value in hearing the music and not seeing it being made but then it becomes a very different creature when removed from its environmental context and the instruments that made it. If something sounds as if it had been generated on a PC and then we discover it was created manually on instruments that weren’t intended as instruments but as ordinary cooking objects let’s say, then wouldn’t we judge the musical product differently? We might say that due to the extra effort and the creativity the musician demonstrated, the music becomes more valuable as an entity in itself.
A very soothing and quite lovely listening experience on the whole, and very well packaged and organised in a way that explains the artist’s intentions and why he used everyday non-musical objects as musical instruments, this album offers much that will delight the listener’s senses.
omnimemento is a sound archive of Hitoshi Kojo since 2005 to present, after the move to Europe from
Japan.
The titles are in chronological order of the original works/releases, not by the release dates of the digital editions here.
So some new releases might be displayed in the lower part of this page.
Official debut of French solo artist Richard Francés. Sci-fi influenced synth work, recalling pioneers like Tangerine Dream and Terry Riley. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 7, 2017
The North Carolina singer and multi-instrumentalist translates the "story of lightness" into nine experimental ambient spirituals. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 8, 2021
The noted audio engineer, who's worked on records for Superchunk (among many others), dreams out loud with the Buchla Music Easel. Bandcamp New & Notable Jun 29, 2016
Canadian producer and multi-instrumentalist galvanizes bowed guitars, cellos, and synths into an off-kilter exploration of heat and desire. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 25, 2024
Written in response to the climate crisis, “Leviathan” is a brooding and beautifully unsettling batch of dark ambient songs. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 16, 2023
