Audiopile Review: The arrival of affordable home recording technology in the 1980s is mostly celebrated for birthing all manner of scratchy post-punk and tinny synth pop. Don’t get us wrong, we love that stuff. But it also allowed folks from the pre-punk progressive underground to experience a previously impossible artistic freedom. It empowered the godlike Peter Hammill to operate outside a music industry that had sold his genius to lesser talents. And it enabled a veritable cottage industry of ambient and new age music. As Japanese heads were often the first to get their hands on the new tech, the kankyō ongaku scene was particularly productive. Of all the tinkerers and boffins who populated that scene, Hiroshi Yoshimura was surely the most purely talented. His music is featherlight, but his knack for melody, and facility with harmony meant it was never trite or insubstantial. Both the lightness and depth of his music are wonderfully displayed in 1987’s ‘Flora’. Shockingly, this album sat on Yoshimura’s shelf until 2006, when it was finally released on CD. And this exquisite new 2×12” 45rpm reissue is the first time it has ever appeared on vinyl. It couldn’t have arrived at a better time because this album is spring incarnate. Sonic cherry blossom.

***

Following their 2024 reissue of Hiroshi Yoshimura’s classic album, Surround, Temporal Drift proudly presents the first-ever reissue of FLORA, Yoshimura’s underappreciated ambient classic.

FLORA was originally recorded and completed in 1987, and remained unreleased until 2006, nearly three years after Yoshimura’s passing in 2003. The album is chronologically and stylistically a follow-up to his acclaimed 1986 works GREEN and SURROUND, wherein Yoshimura continues to play with the ambience of sound and the sound of ambience, underscoring his mastery in the field of environmental music. Yoshimura’s other recorded works include Music For Nine Post Cards (1982), originally produced to be played back inside a museum space, and Pier & Loft (1983), commissioned as accompaniment to a contemporary fashion show.

“FLORA is an album that is listened to perpetually, Passed on from one listener to another, And the charm of the sound- and music-loving figure known as Hiroshi Yoshimura, Just might come drifting through. Like the scent of a small flower.” — Junichi Konuma