Music For Rest Rooms /
Collaboration with Yumiko Morioka
This Rest Room concept led us to the creation of our first Music for Rest Rooms iteration, a collaboration with pianist Yumiko Morioka, who has carved out a unique career that spans being a pioneer of Japanese ambient music in the 1980s through to becoming a successful and celebrated boutique truffle maker.
Yumiko has recently made her own shift to a Rest Room, having moved out of Central Tokyo to the rural wilderness of Oniishi in Gunma Prefecture, and lives surrounded by the natural beauty of forests, lakes, open skies, and dramatic valleys.
We took a research trip up there to investigate how her new daily rhythms and interactions were affecting her outlook, her creative process, her imagination, and her music.
What followed was a journey through a series of moments shared in particular locations around the area.
River-side picnics in a sun-drenched valley surrounded by the hum of summer cicadas, forest wildflower picking, encounters with friends living up a very remote mountain track on a small farm, playing conch shells and across mountain valleys and making Japanese instruments, and the huge deep lake directly across from Yumiko’s large home’s veranda at sunset.
The sounds of these visits–fragments of birds, water, footsteps, laughter, air, conversations, and shared experiences–were recorded, and the content became a series of sonic “moments” that aligned with images and words spoken, to create a series of 5 moments that we drafted into a graphic score and got together to interpret in the studio.
Music for Rest Rooms Graphic Score [James Greer/Nick Luscombe] [7 images]
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Over the course of a few group sessions and edits, what gradually emerged was a strong connection between the content included in each of the 5 moments and our own personal memories of them, which we found we could share and tell in relation to scent and taste, as well as through sound.
We found that though sound is a powerful tool for evoking memory and emotion, when we combined it with the direct hit of a scent, and a tastebud explosion, we could communicate in a language that was less abstract and whose intention was immediately clear – actually strengthening the message of what we wanted to communicate in the abstractness of the sounds.
This circled back to Yumiko’s own transition as a musician working with food, and we imagined creating our menu of sonic memories and solace as though it were a menu for an exclusive collection of chocolates, or truffles, each with their own corresponding Japanese character and description. Together, they suggested an expanded palette for mental rest: not just sound, but multisensory memory, nostalgia, and place.
"The process of realizing our musical score with Yumiko in the studio was one that relied a lot on playing with texture and timbre. For example, I wanted to place the microphones in such a way not just to get the usual piano sound, but to pick up on the percussive hits of the hammers, and on the way the structure of the piano itself echoes and holds vibrations, so we used a range of contact microphones, and a Sennheiser 416 [usually a dialogue booming microphone] right up against the strings inside the piano, alongside the more conventional setup."
- James Greer
in the field and in the studio with yumiko morioka [5 images]
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MUSIC FOR REST ROOMS [COLLABORATION WITH YUMIKO MORIOKA]
MUSIC FOR REST ROOMS / 瀬 [SESERAGI]
Yumiko Morioka, Nick Luscombe, James Greer
The air that purifies you and refreshes your body and soul.
Just like being cleansed in the gentle stream of a cool mountain river in the peak of summertime, whose waters gently run over and around the little rounded stones.
Based around the atmosphere of the river running through Oniishi during the peak of summertime, Seseragi works with and imitates the waters flow and conjures the happy memory of a picnic shared with good friends. The river is central to Oniishi as the source of many of its prized local stones, which have a smooth surface and produce a pleasing sonic backdrop to the valley.
MUSIC FOR REST ROOMS / 華 [HANAYAGI]
Yumiko Morioka, Nick Luscombe, James Greer
The flavour of subtle seduction by small ordinary flowers as the spring morning sunlight illuminates
There is a brightness in every flower you pick within the natural forest; even in the modest small budding weeds that glisten in the sun yet are so often ignored.
During our explorations of Oniishi, in Gunma Prefecture where Yumiko Morioka is currently based, we drive along a small road lined with forests, and Yumiko told us that now she no longer lives in the city she doesn't buy flowers anymore, and she can wander into the forest to choose the wild ones she likes to put on her table. This image of her sneaking in to the morning forest to steal flowers was the birth of this piece.
MUSIC FOR REST ROOMS / 梵 [SOYOGI]
Yumiko Morioka, Nick Luscombe, James Greer
A fragrance that you can trust in, and hold close together as you fall, bringing perfect relaxation of your body.
The sensation of being at peace while watching yourself falling into an abyss of a deep lake in the moonlight–slowly, and with perfect comfort.
Yumiko Morioka's home sits overlooking a large, dark, deep lake, surrounded by steep mountainsides. We looked across to the lake, and imagined the way its ripples glistened under the full moon, and the sensation of falling into its darkness.
MUSIC FOR REST ROOMS / 揺 [YURAGI]
Yumiko Morioka, Nick Luscombe, James Greer
The musky fog of silver mountain mists that surround and cleanse you.
Looking down from the mountain over faintly-visible rice paddies, framed by a vista of tall cedar trees amidst the soft dew of morning fog; hearing familiar morning tones as the valley awakens.
We travelled high in the mountain forests above the deep lake now, gazing down a blue-green valley of forest and occasional small rice field. This area seems to be drenched in a foggy mist, a sensation that was heightened by a visit to some friends living in a remote home here, who practice their instruments and blow conch shells that echo beyond the lake below.
MUSIC FOR REST ROOMS / 萌 [MOEGI]
Yumiko Morioka, Nick Luscombe, James Greer
An aura that uncovers in its path such unreal colours, like the suppressed fire energy within you is escaping
There are many rich shades of green in the valley, but as you look at them during a sweltering summer, imagine if all the trees were red or purple? In the autumn, the power of nature casts a red-hot wave as far as we can see.
Looking at the forests in the brilliant summer's beginnings of sunset, with streaks of light running through the air, we looked at them in a sideways imaginary dream, imagining how crazy it would be if the trees were not deep green, but a blazing red – which sounded totally wild and unnatural, but really does happen every autumn here.
Music for Rest Rooms [MSCTY_Studio x Yumiko Morioka] at Wonderfruit's Decade of Wonder [4 images]
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THE TRIAL AT A DECADE OF WONDER
At Wonderfruit, we circled back on the original concept and project name by presenting the final journey into the 5 moments of Music for Rest Rooms, using speakers placed within a number of the restrooms [toilet facilities] onsite.
What could have potentially been dismissed as a novelty, or missed in the buzz of so much going on, became for many a surprisingly intimate and reflective encounter with an unexpectedly memorable moment, and a space everyone normally rushes through became somewhere to breathe. If anything it meant they stayed longer than they should have.
Visitors commented on feeling unexpectedly cared for and how the connections to real-world sounds, and the rest rooms concept subtly changed their experience of a fundamentally functional space.
For us, this activation validated two of our directions with the Music for Rest Rooms concept.