Album "Placid Wanderings"

(TM writes:)

Interestingly, some of FMT's tracks seem to attract attention and others not as much. Bizarre and weird works tend to be the former, which is quite understandable. But, in fact, I don't really care at all on composition and production if many listeners are likely to pay attention or not, which is evidenced by the fact that we made the album "Placid Wanderings." It doesn't aim at as bizarre and weird the sounds as such past works.

Rather, making bizarre/weird ones is quite easy to me (and presumably others). This album is our endeavours to make music designed to sound natural, beautiful, attractive, placid, and sometimes emotional using such bizarre/weird methods as atonality, much use of monophonic and dyad phrases or noise, complicated polyrhythms, frequent tempo changes and many other challenges to the existing music. (The only difference from the FMT-esque features is more frequent use of chords, rather than scales.) In other words, we made them sound non-"experimental" with experimental means.

The theme is a relaxing travel, and the reason I chose that theme is that I wanted to use the characteristics of FMT, but do the opposite, chillout, which is very challenging.

Another reason is that when I listen to music that is called chillout, I often think that such music is musically stagnant. Of course, I know that it's not interesting musically because it's made acoustically, and I also think that the atmospherics that acoustically built music brings are great. Why not make it a little more musically interesting... without relying too much on acoustic production?

As I feel like I've said many times on various pages of this website, experimental music generally scares listeners. There is almost no consideration given to the atmosphere created by the music or the atmosphere of the space it creates. As if to say, "Scary music is art." Perhaps this has already become the norm for experimental musicians.

I don't think this is necessarily the case. I don't really like horror films, but when I watch videos that introduce scenes from them, the background music is almost always contemporary music. I understand why contemporary music gives such an impression, but it wasn't created with the purpose of using music in that way, at least not from the beginning, and that also fixed the image. It's like writing "contemporary" and pronouncing it "in horror."

Brian Eno and Steve Reich are two of the greatest musicians from that perspective. However, I think it would be good to bring more insane methodologies to chillout music.

During the production of this album there was an interval for about three months from January to April 2023 as we prioritised making the tribute "Boyhood Skies" series.

The album has 10 tracks in it as follows. Each title is linked to each note page.

Coach To The Airport

I usually think about putting a track at the first position that somewhat links between the upcoming album and previous album. In this it's Coach To The Airport because it's made as a drums-&-bass-based version with symmetrical music, which we experimented, and possibly invented, through the tracks called "In The Mirror" in the Auditory Art For Visual Arts album.

Travelling is usually associated with my favorite "vehicles." The Placid Wanderings series includes a small series of "Vehicles'' in Coach To The Airport, Stratosphere, Train From The Airport. 

Stratosphere

When I think of vehicles, I immediately think of Steve Reich's "Different Trains", which I love a lot. Other ones include Minoru Mukaiya's jingles for underground departure.

Stratosphere is one of the Vehicles series, having rhythms made with airplane noise (by the Gating method) as well as an interlude of what reminds me of Steve Reich. 

TI told me that this album seemed to have commonalities with Kraftwerk's "Autobahn" album, which was all played with synthesisers, took up vehicles (especially cars) and used a lot of sounds and noise that reminded us of them.

Train From The Airport

The third track is what takes up the train from the Vehicles series. It's, in short, digital, atonal Acid Jazz in me. In general, digital music sounds very "digital" and atonal music sounds very "atonal" or "experimental." This work challenges such stereotypes by sounding quite natural to some extent. 

Flowers

To me, this work is also very experimental but doesn't sound very much so. The main phrases are simultaneously strengthened and weakened in a wave-like way; its frequency is 5.33 beats. In other words the "wave" is gradually delayed against the primary rhythm on 4 beats, which could be said to be a polyrhythm. But I've never heard such polyrhythms. Nevertheless, again, it is designed to sound natural rather than experimental.

This is also a challenge to the music called "sakura songs" in Japan, in which I haven't found musically interesting so far.

Spa Music

Actually, at first I was thinking of calling it "Spa Series", but unfortunately I couldn't think of "Spa Music 2" at all, and I don't have that much attachment to Spa, so decided to take up "travel'' instead which in Japan people generally thought would include Spa. Spa Music is the first track we made for the album.

Light Through Leaves

Again and again, experimental music tends to sound frightening and not beautiful. Light Through Leaves is a challenge to that; experimental but full of chillout and beauty. The basic rhythm here is the irregular combination of 6 beats, 6 and 4. The main parts are guitars and a piano, most of which we use monophonically and those follow a certain scale and it shifts frequently.

Free Day

The concept at the very beginning was that "I made this to develop 'Here I Am' into something more advanced; introverted and instable-minded, and both contemporary and ancient" according to the text I left in the notation. While I was making it, the concept was gradually formed into something like "atonal Acid Jazz."

First Visit

For me, First Visit is about a trip I took with my parents, both of whom passed away, and "Silence After You Leave'' from the tribute project "Boyhood Skies" has similar underlying sentiment. Also, this is based on the notion of the suite like our past works "Symphony No.1" but Movement-like sections get mixed gradually, where the scenes change suddenly. There were many other commonalities and inter-influences with Boyhood Skies.

Flame On The Candle

In the notation we have something called "dynamic signs", which I used here as well as in Flowers. Like that work, what if we put some short notes with the signs instead of long notes? Or, what if the signs continually changed and controlled the balance of the ensemble, ie, multiple instrumental parts? By doing these, couldn't we realise a sort of continual small lurching feels just like a flame on a candle? What we are doing musically here is like these questions.

The Way Back Home

I just hoped to some track about the way back home from the wandering at the end of the album, but musically there are various experiments here as well. Basically, it has a 3 bars pattern, which is literally odd, and follows 5 beats, which is odd as well. Furthermore, a polyrhthmic pattern for 2.25 beats joins, whose scale is slightly different from the one mainly used.

The Placid Wanderings series shouldn't be the first to use FMT's unusual methodologies to create a relaxing atmosphere, and I feel like we've been doing it a lot for a year or two. The eight tracks on Newfangled Hotel Ambience are iconic. Therefore, it is closely related to that series. Placid Wanderings is about travel in general, and NHA is about hotels, which is an important part of that, so it could be considered a sequel.

On the other hand, there are many musical differences with NHA, but in terms of conceptual differences, NHA is indoor, while PW is a little more outdoor. Also, PW is mainly a daytime image, and NHA is mainly a nighttime image.

The key visual was downloaded from a photo site, and I don't know where the photo was taken, but it reminds me of somewhere approaching Tokyo on the expressway from Narita Airport.