Three so years in the making, "Oto No Wa: Selected Sounds of Japan 1988​-​2018" is the fifth installment in Copenhagen label Music For Dreams excellent Collector’s Series - where they commission diggers and DJs from around the world to assemble themed compilation albums. This time, they enlisted the talents of a trio of Japan-based experts of the highest calibre: Music supervisor extraordinaire Ken Hidaka, talented producer-DJ Max Essa, and Dr. Rob, master of the referenced review, and the brains behind our limited edition "Ibiza DJs 1976 - 1988" book.

Although the compilation is titled "Oto No Wa: Selected Sounds of Japan 1988​-​2018", in opposition to the trend towards reissuing Japanese music from the 70s and 80s, once they got started, the three found their selections veering more towards the 90s, 2000s and even 2010s. As Dr Rob told me in a recent interview for Bandcamp Daily, "We realized that we knew tons of [more contemporary] Japanese artists—many of them having been guests of ours at Bonobo... No one seemed interested in more current Japanese music—they were concentrating on dusty holy grails. I guess living here—with Max and Ken [Hidaka] active in the business—we were in the perfect position to address this.” By Bonobo, Rob is referring to the psychedelic two-story sound house the trio and their friends have thrown their eclectic monthly Lone Star club night at for close to a decade.

So, what do we get on this compilation? Well, we get 14 songs, which when viewed collectively, represent the depth and width of digging done and the range of connections made by Rob, Ken and Max over the last couple of decades. Let's take a look.

On 'Sealed', Yoshio Ojima, the in-house producer for the Wacoal lingerie company's '80s music imprint NEWSIC lets sparkling chimes and percussion float over a deeply pictorial synthscape, evoking a rich technonaturism that hasn't dated one iota. Ojima's still around as well. He can be found taking part in improvised concerts and recording with younger environmental music enthusiasts like the Portland-based duo, Visible Cloaks. Psychedelic three-piece Olololop (pronounced Olololopee), a group of experimental vision questers from Japan's North continue along a similar path with 'Mon (Orte Remix)', a vivid and evocative re-imagining of a single from 2012, before letting their twirling, tanned melodies evaporate and reform into a sturdy exercise in piano-led rhythmic ambient.

Hyper-connected percussionist Kazuya Kotani's 'Fatima' follows a similar rhythm ambient pathway, but with the inclusion of bongos, seashells, and shakers, sultry, semi-whispered vocals and a warm dubby bassline - once this one starts heating up, you're in for a dose of pure lounge bliss. The Nice Guitar Dub of SDP's N.I.C.E Guy, produced and remixed by Japanese sampledelic beat scientists Major Force hits a similar note, sun-kissed guitar, irrepressible strutting grooves for the boardwalk and a sunglasses emoji vocal snippet complete captures the best of summer in the 90s.

Meanwhile on 'Frostie', the Japanese big-band Little Tempo successfully wed dub rhythms and bass to steel pan percussion from Takeshi Toki, coming up with a Japanese perspective on Pan-Caribbean grooves and melodies, while clearing the way for Karel Arbus and Eiji Takamatsu's hallucinatory percussion jam-out "Coco & The Fish", which followed by the seismic/cartographic synthscaping of Kentaro Takizawa's 'Gradual Life' - a masterclass in restraint, tectonic movement, and volcanic release.

Percussionist Yoshiaki Ochi, Ojima's associate at NEWSIC delivers 'Balasong', an idiophone jam for the ages, and Kaoru Inoue contributes beautifully to Oto No Wa's technonaturalism quotient with the watery electronics of 'Wave Introduction', a piece that builds tension into relaxation with a single electrocution along the way, before Little Big Bee revisits the Balearic dub lounge bounce heard earlier on the compilation with 'Scuba' - an investigation that reframes a perfect sunset on the beach as something to be viewed from under the sea; probably surrounded by fish.

Book-ended by four more cuts that ride the line between ambient and rhythmic ambient, Coastlines, 'East Dry River', Susumu Yokota, 'Uchu Tanjyo', Chillax, 'Time And Space', and Takashi Kokubo, 'Quiet Inlet', Oto No Wa stands firm as a reminder of the depths of Japanese music culture that exist beyond the storied 70s/80s ambient, city-pop and boogie years. More delights, treasures and discoveries await, and with the likes of Rob, Ken, and Max as our guides, we've got a lot of great listening ahead of us.

Oto Now Wa: Selected Sounds of Japan 1988​-​2018 is out now in 2XLP, CD and digital formats through Music For Dreams (order here)