It all began with Thelonious Monk – live, on a stage in Tokyo. Masahiro Sugaya saw something he had not known until then: music and movement on equal terms. This shaped his collaboration with the dance theatre group Pappa Tarahumara, for whom he composed first The Pocket of Fever in 1987, then Music From Alejo. Both existed for a long time only on cassette. The former was reissued in 2025 by Ambient Sans; now comes the first vinyl release of Music From Alejo – a cut Sugaya himself created from the original DAT tapes.
Music From Alejo is ambient as choreography: Sugaya turns repetition, silence and synthetic minimal forms into movement – music that does not drive, but organises space in suspension. Sugaya composed from his home studio, in MIDI, from an inner image that cannot be put into words. »Oldfashioned« sounds like an instrumental Talk Talk moment, with piano, saxophone, drums and plenty of air in between. »Straight Line Floating In The Sky« works with an arpeggiated synthesiser that circles rather than advances. »Mistral« runs on a guitar figure reminiscent of 70s Italian library music. Five pieces, 47 minutes. Nothing pushes.
Minimalism, silence, precision: Sugaya himself locates this attitude in Japan. »I’ve never left Japan«, Sugaya says in the booklet interview. »I see everything through the Japanese language, from my own place.« He calls the vinyl ritual – turning side A, listening to side B – »almost ceremonial«. One thinks of the tea ceremony: attention as practice, repetition as form. Sugaya wonders whether someone elsewhere might feel the world differently through his music. The answer lies in the turning.
