A member of Tokyo’s UNKNOWN ME collective, H. Takahashi released the album “Body Trip” in 2016, with California’s Constellation Tatsu.  The cassette contained 12 tracks of gentle chimes, drones and peacefully percolating programming. Theremin-like textures and drops of robotic rain falling in hypnotic, gamelan gong patterns. Mediative, healing minimalist electronica, that relied on the repetition of simple melodic refrains. Machines mimicking ripples and splashes. Organic natural sounds. Bubbles of effervescence in fluid, free-flowing, evolving improvisations. Synthesising new age oases. Places for quiet thought.  Places where thoughts and be collected, or forgotten. Winking, blinking lullabies of dancing but relaxing reflections and refractions. Weaving in singing bowl sonorities and woodland, wildlife field recordings. “Highball” was a highlight. Sound design that conjured the whiskey trickling, soda fizz popping and ice cubes clinking in the titular drink. 

The album has been remastered, and each track in turn remixed. David Edren brings kalimba clicks and clips of choral voices to “Enter”, and a temple-like spiritual stillness to “Quiet”. Kohei Oyamada stretches high-pitched whistling sine waves and cicada chirruping around “Pipeline”, adds a rush of rapid, energetic particles to “Metabolism”, and chattering circuitry, like tiny, techno organisms, nanotech nature to “Highball”. K-LONE transforms “Tera” into chilled, bleep bass-ed, micro-house. The Vernon Spring replays “Pulse” on acoustic piano. TOMC’s rework of “Absorption” is set to a sorta bossa nova swing, recalling the delicate, pretty electronica that Morr Music were famous for. Matthew David briefly breaks the ambience and makes “Limestone” move to chunky, chugging, wonky, wobbly collaged beats. Leif washes “Hotspring” in waves of static that could be surf. COLA REN’s re-arrangment of “Drain”, with glacial glissandos and muted brass-like movements, is the least abstract, most “traditional” moment on offer. 

The pieces are sometimes short, and certainly sonically varied, yet they fit together as a single, complimentary whole. Rather than conventional concepts of melody, serene, soothing tones snake like growing strands of mycelia, or bounce like particles in excited Brownian motion, collectively creating a virtual Zen garden of calming kankyo ongaku. 

H. Takahashi’s “Body Trip Remastered & Remixed” can be ordered directly from Constellation Tatsu.