The Hoh Rainforest, on the Olympic Peninsula, was unlike anything Hiroshi Yoshimura had seen before. Ancient spruce and hemlock trees stretched hundreds of feet high, casting off strands of lichen from their branches like flowing locks of hair. Fuzzy moss flocked nearly every inch of the trees’ trunks, costuming them as fantastical creatures that could come to life at any moment. “It felt as though I had stepped inside a stage set,” Yoshimura said of his surroundings. More than the incredible sights, what surprised him most about his visit to the Washington state national park was that little noise penetrated from beyond the verdant canopies. When the rainfall ceased and the fauna that called Hoh home stood still, barely a sound could be heard.
For Yoshimura, a student of the avant-garde, quiet presented a challenge: to find music in subatomic movements. The Japanese composer had already established himself as a pioneering figure in environmental music by the time he released 1996’s Quiet Forest, the last full-length album issued in his lifetime, having created some of the first semi-permanent musical installations for Japan’s public spaces. Inspired by John Cage’s 4’33” and Erik Satie’s experiments in “furniture music,” he introduced ambience into museums, airports, hotels, and subway systems, theorizing that it would encourage consideration of one’s surroundings, and that the smallest sounds of the environment would add rich texture back into the music.
No score yet, be the first to add.
But like any good theory, it evolved as more data points were acquired. Yoshimura was always following his curious ear, which took him from composing scores for prefabricated homes on his genre-defining 1986 masterpiece Surround to audio diaries of his strolls through the manicured gardens of public parks on Flora. He would make one last stylistic shift before his passing, assuming the role of a fanciful landscape painter on Quiet Forest, an album of wistful synth melodies underpinned by pulsing vibraphones and steady drum beats. Yoshimura filters the magical realism of the Hoh Rainforest through peaceful repose: The swells of synth on “Sunrise” evoke luminous beams zig-zagging through a labyrinth of trees, and the gentle mallet strikes of “After Rain” sound like beads of dew rolling off leaves onto swollen soil. Field recordings are used sparingly—birdsong and rushing water can be heard on “Dancing Creek”—but Yoshimura mostly prefers to be musically descriptive, not literal.
There’s a sense that every sound is an amplification of Yoshimura’s careful listening. The pan flutes on “Whispering” mimic the distant call of woodland creatures, kalimba and ripples of synth role-playing as responses from opposite corners of the forest. A low, barely perceptible static underpins the lively “Hoh River,” chopping up pitched percussion on speedy white rapids. Quiet Forest is, ironically, Yoshimura’s most kinetic record—some may be surprised by the prevalence of programmed drums and time-keeping tambourines across the album—but his unparalleled ability to bend time is still present. “Lullaby of Leaves” channels the elemental power of earth into a tranquilizing spell, making a bed of rustling foliage to lie on. Yoshimura prided himself on the ability to sedate any listener, boasting in the liner notes of his 1986 classic GREEN that his mixing engineer was drifting off during the sessions.
Many that knew Yoshimura noted he was attentive and soft-spoken, though a few were privileged to see his more playful side. Friend and museum curator Tsutomu Mizusawa described him as an “urban version of Snufkin,” a sort of aural philosopher that teased music from mundanity, like the way he stirred a spoon in his drink or the sing-songy way he’d elongate the tail of his sentences. Listening to Quiet Forest, you hear rare dimensions of his personality that offer a more complete picture of his brilliance. It’s not as stately as Music for Nine Post Cards or as downright pretty as Surround, but it’s just as illustrative of his boundless imagination.
