Tomotsugu Nakamura - Stay In Solitude / The Green Kingdom - Environs (Tenei)

*** This blog post first appeared in TSMM's March 14th Newsletter, where you can get all the tips (and more) first ***

Japan’s Tomotsugu Nakamura is one of my favourite ambient artists. He’s been making ambient music for the last twelve years and has developed a refined, minimal sonic mosaic style of composition, where he crafts each track from fragments of acoustic, electronic/processed sounds and choice field recordings.

Last April, after gracing some of the world’s best ambient labels, he decided to go it alone and Teinei was born, launched with the release of an album by the maestro himself and fellow Japanese ambient producer Haruhisa Tanaka. Both recordings are great and made it to the blog.

You also need to check out the latest label release which just dropped from The Green Kingdom (disclaimer his last LP was released on TSMM’s label last summer - check it out!). This, rather like the TSMM release, is something of a departure from his trademark sound, and he’s delivered a beautifully crafted tribute to Kankyo Ongaku - Japanese environmental music. It fits the label’s current aesthetic trajectory a treat, and is one of his best albums to date, which is saying something for this respected ambient producer with such a long history.

Back to Nakamura. Last week I was pleasantly surprised to notice that I’d missed a late 2024 transmission from him. The work was initially made for a project entitled, “Music Suitable for Reading Books”, and he’s certainly delivered the perfect soundtrack for a night curled up on the sofa with your latest novel.

The sounds of a minimal piano refrain get the ball rolling and that’s where the energy levels remain, perfectly pitched to hover around the lower limits of your auditory perception and create a soundtrack that heightens rather than distracts from your chosen tome. The keys are intertwined with the subtlest of machine emanating sounds and the unhurried picking of an acoustic guitar that, like the piano, has been carefully recorded to create an enticing intimacy to the recording, and as always there’s plenty of space between the precision placed notes and sounds, allowing you time to contemplate the latest plot twist. It’s another minimal marvel from Nakumura.

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Playlist Companion

For a longer sound bath head over the warm waters of the Slow Ambient Playlist.