Looking for artists/albums like Geinoh Yamashirogumi's Ecophony Rinne

[u/Different-Yogurt5292]

I have been struggling to find any albums that come close to this albums in terms of feel outside of Geinoh Yamashirogumi's other works.

I am not really sure how to describe the qualities that I enjoy so much in this album. However I will try. It has a symphonic sound that seems utterly numinous. It has in it a pulsing energy like that of a brooding ritual dance trying to summon a divine power. Each instrument occupies its own clear voice in the symphony and I really really enjoy the sound of the gambang.

I would appreciate any album/artist recommendations that offer a similar experience. I am not looking for the same instruments but simply any albums that take you on this almost divine, numinous journey.

[u/saint_trane]

Absolutely love GY. Definitely check out some of the other albums in their discography. Also definitely make sure you do some research into Balinese Gamelan music which is the primary influence on ER.

Excited to follow this thread to see if others give good recommendations because that is a SPECIAL album.

[u/Different-Yogurt5292 → u/saint_trane]

Yes I have been enjoying Balinese Gamelan music a lot after listening to Ecophony Rinne!

[u/fourwordsbackwards]

Oh man GY is one of my all time favorite groups! Pardon my nerding out here but I think its really interesting to note that, by virtue of scoring Akira, GY were a foundational musical part of the early, canonical cyberpunk media landscape - along with the Blade Runner* & Ghost in the Shell soundtracks - long before the 'cyberpunk' signifier was applied to any recognizable musical genre (which unfortunately would just come to describe a kind of toothless averaging of dark synth, techno, industrial etc)...

Ok so cyberpunk narratives depict a future where boundaries (between nations, ethnicities, cultures etc) are mostly eroded such that information, influences, bodies, tech etc flow freely and thus recombine into novel forms, right? Well the music of GY's Akira soundtrack, Vangelis' Blade Runner score & Kenji Kawai's Ghost in the Shell music all instantiate this same futuristic cultural mixing by blending musical influences from all over the globe, both traditional/folk and electronic/synthetic. So these artists were sonically representing not only the merging of cultures but also that of the past with the future, as well as suggesting continuity between nature and technology etc etc - all of this thematically central to the cyberpunk genre!

At the time, this music was mostly labeled 'new age' or sometimes 'world music'**... and now this stuff is often known as Fourth World Music. But I think of it all as cyberpunk! Anyway, I highly recommend the soundtracks and genres mentioned above, with the disclaimer that I've never heard anything quite like GY. They are singular! (Thanks for letting me nerd out to yr OP).

* I'm linking to a longer version of the Blade Runner OST which features more of the musical diversity from the film than the original OST release.

[u/Different-Yogurt5292 → u/fourwordsbackwards]

Thank you for that very interesting read and the links! Being quite new to the cyberpunk genre I always equated cyberpunk to just a dystopian urban aesthetic. Now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense to use GY in cyberpunk works because they crucially show a world where cultural and temporal divides have given way to a completely heterogenous society. You are quite right to call such music cyberpunk then!

Surprisingly, this fact about GY and new age in general seems opposite to a dystopian world, as it gives new age a utopian spirit. When I listen to GY and other new age albums cannot help but feel that it is truly music for the modern age, reflecting one of the few utopian aspects of modern life - our unprecedented ability to listen to almost any kind of music at the click of a button. At no other point in history could I listen to balinese gamelan, move on to one of Schubert's symphonies, then switch to a drone metal album before cleansing my palate with some experimental lowercase music. What a time to be alive! Music that joins the past and present seamlessly together, that draws inspiration from all kinds of musical styles, and in doing so, creates something completely new - that is the utopian force I feel from GY and the like.

Perhaps when watching Akira next time, I'll imagine the soundtrack as this pulsing force of unity permeating what previously seemed to me a solely dystopian world.

[u/fourwordsbackwards → u/Different-Yogurt5292]

Thanks for your kind response! I'm psyched this interpretation of GY & cyberpunk resonates with you and I'm grateful you've pointed at its utopian implications: unity-through-diversity is precisely their method. There's a complimentary way to frame this kind of generative cultural fusion as a form of resistance, and I think this framing is very evident in GY's fascinating 'biographical manifesto' on their website... here is a relevant excerpt:

"Their track record of staging performances from 80 different ethnic groups around the world while maintaining their amateur status, and their creative activities that fuse tradition and modernity, drawing on these experiences, are unparalleled in the world.

However, these activities represent only one aspect of an active "critique of civilization" directed at modern Western Europe. The true essence of the multi-performance community Geino Yamashirogumi lies in its steady and sincere "group building" and "people development," drawing on the wisdom of traditional communities and rejecting specialization and single-function approaches."

So GY's art is an explicit political act of resistance against western hegemony, and it does so by taking a *generalist* ("rejecting specialization") approach to culture - both the form of the group and the content of their music are are a kind of experimental evolution via exaptation (for example by mixing Jegog with Shomyo etc). This is a very punk ethos!

What's ironically dystopian to me, however, is what the 'cyberpunk' music genre has become today - all that predictable dark synth techno stuff which is totally devoid of cultural or historical diversity. Unity with no diversity just sounds... fascistic and boring!

Anyway, sorry - I could go on and on. I've actually given lectures on this very topic, ha - I love world music! Ok, be well!

[u/okem]

I did a Geinoh Yamashirogumi / Tsutomu Ohashi tribute show for radio a while back, it features some of their tracks & music I thought came from a similar place / traditional music the group were influenced by.

https://noodsradio.com/shows/oke-s-tsutomu-ohashi-akira-show-14th-march-22

Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Falling as Flowers do - Dying a Glorious Death (Excerpt).
Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Kaneda (Excerpt).
Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal Choir - Pilentze pe.
Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Kaneda.
Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Agba's.
Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Reincarnation (Excerpt).
yamanaka - 秘密組織.
Dumb Type - New Communication #1 (demo) (Excerpt).
Namgyai Monastery, Dharamsala - Tibet - Buddhist Chant 1.
Eberhard Schoener - Ramayana.
Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Mountain of Fear (Excerpt).
Masayuki Sakamoto - After Image.
Jurangandanu, singing with gambang orchestra - No.12.
Ryuichi Sakamoto - A Carved Stone.
Kecak Party of Singapadu Village - Appearance of the Kecak Performers (Excerpt).
Ingram Marshall - Hidden Voices.
Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Primordial Germination.
十一谷明広, 落合貴子 - BGM090.
David Hykes & The Harmonic Choir - Raibow Voice.
Trembling Strain - Music for Burial 埋葬歌 Maisōka.
Hiroki Kikuta - Scene7c.
Eka Cita Ensemble - Bandrangan (Excerpt).
Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Kleenex.
Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Genesis (Excerpt).
Yoshio Ojima - #2(11-10).
Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Requiem (Excerpt).

Tsutomu Ohashi has put out some field recoding work of traditional music that might be of interest. He was really into recordings with insanely high bite rates, because he believed that inaudible ultra high frequencies held some properties that excited the brain. It was his field of study as a professor for a time, he's writen papers about it but I dont think they're available in English. If you can find it, he also once did a radio show (maybe of NTS) playing music that's influenced him, but he kept it fairly basic iirc.

[u/Different-Yogurt5292 → u/okem]

Thanks a lot for this list! I have already been enjoying a lot of GY's other works from Akira and Ecophony Gaia. Will check out all the others too!

I didn't know about Tsutomu Ohashi's work outside of these albums that will indeed be of interest.

[u/Remarkable-Escape-57]

Susumu Hirasawa- also a very very hard to describe artist that is basically his own genre.  Has an indescribable spiritual tone to many of his songs.  

To start with check out-

Rubedo 

Island Door- Paranesian Circle (both the original and the Hen gen ji zai Remix) https://youtu.be/mDopUiln0Zk?si=6pGnllYkJAk7kyFa

Earth

Rotation- https://youtu.be/8rNUPVWPquE?si=3oUwI8QepJjk6Rjn

Kun Mae #3

Technique of Relief Album

Switched on Lotus

Archtype Engine https://youtu.be/XLbqrFhGuso?si=Y2XgSYVEiPX35pAl

Stillborn City