...

Welcome! Let's start with a banger. It's Yoshimura Hiroshi's Wet Land (1993).

It's a lot more than "environment music" but it is also exactly that. A lot more than just "ambient" but definitely delivers an ambience. The nature sounds blend with new agey synths as they're supposed to, it's all very chill. I dunno if I can really do it justice in words - it is more of a tonal horizon that opens for experience a well-structured sense of, well, kinda funny to say it like this, moisture. Warmth. Wetness, which, as we know, is the essence of moisture, or was it the other way around? I love it to bits, even if it doesn't reach the emotional depths of some of the stuff we'll be sampling later. A good way to get your feet wet in the genre, as the pieces have a definite forward movement that offers itself easily to an interested listener.

Lots of good textures here, layers that unfold with purpose, like a spring stream that flows down with its own rhythm, not one for hurrying but definitely not one for just staying put. We pass through forests, small ponds, a mangrove swamp, all places where the element of water is constantly present. A classic of the genre.

I don't know whether any kind of grading system is appropriate or asked for here, but a definite 6/5 from me.

Tasting notes:

Environmental, natural, wet, blissful, rather zen, like a leaf floating down a stream, travelling with no hurry, all in good time

Recommended for:

Something that requires concentration: writing, tea, meditation, musing about the ineffable while staring out of the window

Just listen to it:

-murasaki