Hiroshi Yoshimura Surround LP (Blue Vinyl)

"If Surround can be listened to as music that's as close to air itself, allowing us to enter each listener's sound scenery, or as something that exists within a new perspective, expanding the middle ground between sound and music, and transforming it into a comfortable space, it would be much appreciated." - Hiroshi Yoshimura

Temporal Drift proudly presents the long-awaited, first-ever reissue of Surround, Hiroshi Yoshimura's sought-after ambient classic.

Originally released as an album in January 1986, Surround was recorded by Yoshimura as a commission from home builder Misawa Homes, intended to function as an "amenity" designed to enhance the company's newly built living spaces. A pioneer in the field of environmental music, Yoshimura's previous works included Music for Nine Post Cards (1982), originally produced to be played back inside a museum space, and designing sound environments for public spaces and subway systems. Surround was recorded almost concurrently with the acclaimed and popular Green (1986); the two albums are described by Hiroyoshi Shiokawa in his liner notes as being Yoshimura's yin and yang.

In his original notes for the album, Yoshimura recommends that Surround be placed in the same family of sounds "as the vibration of footsteps, the hum of an air conditioner, or the clanging of a spoon inside a coffee cup." And, as he suggests, "with the addition of city noise from outside the window," you may hear Surround in a completely new way.

The task was daunting: He had to make people's homes - the most intimate, comfortable place in anyone's life - even more hospitable. The album's most arresting quality points to his solution: It encourages an appreciation for everyday beauty. Yoshimura was keenly receptive to the sublimity of the world around him; he'd once spent an entire day looking heavenward, playing his piano to the steady drifting of clouds. Such dedicated practices may have informed the natural rhythms at the heart of Surround, where patient metallophone and guitar-like melodies swim in reflecting pools of limpid electronic tone....Music this tender feels like a generous embrace.