Hiroshi Yoshimura: Flora (2LP) [TEMPORAL DRIFT]

Why you'll love it

This Temporal Drift edition is the first time Flora has come out on vinyl, remastered and cut at 45 RPM across two discs in a gatefold jacket with an obi strip. It sits alongside Green and Surround as part of Yoshimura's late-1980s run of kankyō ongaku, the Japanese environmental music he helped pioneer.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Remastered
• Cut at 45 RPM
• Gatefold jacket
• Obi strip

About the album

Some albums arrive on time and some arrive when the world is ready for them. Hiroshi Yoshimura finished Flora in 1987, the year after Green and Surround, but it stayed on the shelf until 2006, nearly three years after his death. By then a new generation was discovering his soft, patient music, and Flora has been quietly gathering admirers ever since.

Yoshimura spent his career designing sound for galleries, museums, train stations and public spaces, and Flora has that same unhurried sense of place. "Over The Clover" opens with a gentle, bobbing melody, "Asagao" (morning glory) and "Ojigisou" (the sensitive plant) bloom slowly out of simple keyboard figures, and "Maple Syrup Factory" is as cosy as it sounds. The closer, "Satie On The Grass," tips a hat to Erik Satie, one of his earliest inspirations. As on so much of his work, the melodies are simple and unhurried, with plenty of air left around every note.

It suits a rainy afternoon, a long train ride or a room full of houseplants. The houseplants, we're told, have not complained once.

Also at Kops: more Hiroshi Yoshimura on vinyl · browse Electronic

Tracklist

Listen

On Temporal Drift (cat# DRFT14), a reissue of the 2006 album.