In a world beset by traumas, there has been a marked new age turn in music in recent years. The likes of Jenny Hval, Björk and Gang Gang Dance have made thoughtful use of therapeutic sounds while cleaving closer to this plane than ambient musical adventurers of yore. Even more so Yokohama-born, London-based composer and sound engineer Hinako Omori. Her debut album, A Journey…, is born of an immersive project created at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studios for the 2020 lockdown version of the Womad festival, and is inspired by the 1980s Japanese therapy of shinrin-yoku, “forest bathing”, a walk in the woods as an exercise in awareness.
Field recordings from the Chew Valley, Mendip Hills and the Wiltshire fields near Real World become a solarpunk sci-fi soundtrack on the likes of Spaceship Lament, in which sparse, silvery hazes and hyperdrive arpeggios are lit by suddenly transfixing swoops of synth. Time becomes elastic in Will You Listen In; its soft blooms, swells of synth, interweaving whispers and soft cries are made for Pauline Oliveros-style deep attention. A word of warning, though, on the album’s “healing” frequencies and binaural beats: “As a disclaimer, I’d recommend not listening to the music while operating machinery,” Omori has said. “A relaxed environment would be better.”
A Journey… will be released on 18 March on Houndstooth. Hinako Omori will perform at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London, with the London Contemporary Orchestra on 19 March, 8pm
