Inoyama Land are Makoto Inoue and Yasushi Yamashita. The two friends have been making music together since 1976. Initially meeting and working on theatre productions, their 1983 debut LP Danzindan-Pojidon was co-produced by Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Haruomi Hosono. Its intricate electronics placed them within Japan`s emerging “Kankyo Ongaku” scene, a loose collective of musicians, arguably centred around Hiroshi Yoshimura, who were experimenting with machines and ambient music. Rather than releasing records Inoue and Yamashita instead focused on live improvisation and also teamed up with the company Sound Process Design to produce “BGM” for a wide range of environments, from high-end hotels, galleries, and museums, to shopping malls, television shows and commercials. Incredibly prolific, by the duo’s own admission, they were greatly assisted by Japan’s then economic bubble, which allowed for a constant supply of lucrative commissions. 

I was lucky enough to interview, and provide DJ support for Inoyama Land around the release of their last album Trans Kunang, back in the winter of 2021. At that gig I witnessed, firsthand, the sense of humour and fun that accompanies Inoyama Land’s innovations. I was also amazed, and touched by the level of intuition that flows between them. The pair now have a new LP to share, Radio Yugawara, where these attributes are extended to include Italian artists Nicoletta Favari and Christopher Salvito aka Passepartout Duo. These collaborations all feature the “Chromaplane” an instrument that Favari and Salvito invented. 

The sessions for the album took place in Inoue’s hometown of Yugawara, at a kindergarten founded by his father. The recordings were framed in the form of a game, where the four players improvised in interchangeable pairs with both the children’s and electronic instruments. Resulting in electro-acoustic pieces that pit layered chimes against synthesised “organic” oscillations. Where high-pitched timbres and textures dance to ceremonial hand drums, and drones mimic monastic prayer. Symphonic swells serenading softly struck gamelan gongs and chattering circuitry.

Observatory appears to have been carefully crafted from interlocking sonic cogs. Its Swiss clockwork intricacy invoking a sense of tranquility beneath stretched church organ-like tones. Mosaic puts ripples of repetition, rapid flashes of frequencies, behind acoustic piano. Solivago is a peaceful, almost classical, pastoral, where its sharp sequences sound like spots of rain. The aquatic aesthetics of the bucolic, bubbling, Berceuse is a flashback 40 years to Inoyama Land’s debut and the classic, Wasser. 

The set as a whole is made up of not songs, but sceneries. A suite of pieces that map imaginary landscapes. Some of which seem quite alien, but are nonetheless beautiful. These electronic ecosystems can feel like microscopic close-ups of life on Earth – the glitched Xiloteca, for example, mirrors Matthewdavid’s Mycelium Music – or alternatively journeys into outer space. On the delicate, balletic, Axolotl Dreams, trippy treatments help to sculpt such extra-terrestrial exotica, and paint pictures of the first flowerings of strange new worlds. 

Passepartout Duo & Inoyama Land’s Radio Yugawara is out now on Tonal Union.