by David Wilikofsky
I don’t know about you, but my nerves are shot. Between the sensationalist clickbait every news organization seems to be churning out to the lingering threat of a long, drawn out legal battle to settle the election, everything seems fucked right now. So first off, go out and vote. This is likely the most important and consequential election of our lifetimes, and sitting out just isn’t an option. Once you’ve done that, you can reward yourself by listening to Shiho Yabuki’s The Body Is a Message of the Universe. It’s an album that I’ve found soothing lately, and hopefully you will too.
Shiho Yabuki began studying music at a young age, training as a classical pianist. She quickly discovered an interest in improvisation, creating compositions in conjunction with the sounds of nature around her. This led her to study jazz and eventually move to New York, where she pursued a career in music. Following a failed marriage, Yabuki returned to Japan to start a career as a recording artist. Because she couldn’t drum up interest from existing labels, she started her own (Esthetic Music) which released her debut album, The Body Is a Message of the Universe.
Yabuki is known as a pioneer of healing music; her compositions are at once unobtrusive and enveloping. They don’t feel like songs as much as they do meditations. There are certainly melodies and, on occasion, dynamic shifts, but they don’t feel central to the music. Rather, it’s music that rewards your presence and reveals its charms slowly. Much of the album is about stasis, a repeated melody or phrase slowly unfurling. They are mantras, each repetition sinking you deeper into the current moment. At some places, like the thunderclaps that open “Tenshingoso”, the music takes a decidedly abrasive approach; the interruptions feel particular jarring in context. But as with life, everything passes; the storm is always followed by calm.
For music that feels designed to be unassuming, there’s a wide variety of sounds. “Samadhi” sounds like a sparse outtake from the Twin Peaks soundtrack. “Teshingoso”, as discussed above, features thuderclaps and drops of water, harkening back to Yabuki’s early musical interests in the natural world. Other tracks like “Energy Flow” sounds more in line with contemporary Japanese ambient artists such as Inoyama Land or Hiroshi Yoshimura. But none of this hits you over the head. It’s music that is merely present, content to exist without demanding anyone’s attention. In this age of information overload, that feels like both a rarity and a gift.