If you want to take the listener on a journey with your music, it's helpful to set up an enticing framing, and one look at the oceanic cover art of "Resonance", Japanese pianist Yumiko Morioka's first and only solo recording gives you the feeling that you're in for a voyage or sojourn of sorts. Hit play, and before the first track "Komorebi" is done, that feeling will be well and truly confirmed.

Across Resonance, originally released through Akira Ito's Green & Water imprint in 1987, Yumiko, a piano prodigy who studied overseas at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, uses a Bösendorfer grand piano, field recordings of rivers and streams to summon up a series of blissful instrumentals, sometimes fleshed out by obe and violin provided by some of her associates. Richly pictorial and sungazed, but sweetly melancholic, Yumiko's compositions movie like watercolour animations painted on OHP plastic, with light and shadows rippling across them for added evocation.

Ostensibly the sort of release you could easily file in with the Kankyō ongaku (Japanese environmental music) of the era, the influence of Western minimalism and avant-garde composition (such as the Parisian composer Erik Satie) can also be heard across "Resonance"s ten pieces. Somewhere between timeless and out of time, it's a beautiful soundtrack for small moments and quiet times, which funnily enough make up a big proportion of my life at the moment while New Zealand is in a state of national lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic.

Apparently, at the time, "Resonance" sold reasonably well, becoming a staple in soundtrack Japanese TV documentaries, maternity clinics and healing shops before fading into the background to await the time in which it would return. That time is now, and I'm very thankful that Métron Records were able to make this reissue happen. Read through the liner notes and spend some time with it, Yumiko has a remarkable story, one befitting of her equally remarkable music.

Resonance is available now in digital and vinyl formats through Métron Records (order here)