Rarely has a genre tag been more superfluous than in this case. The work is called Quiet Forest. It was recorded by Hiroshi Yoshimura. Ambient hardly gets more ambient than that. Yoshimura, who died in 2003, is a pioneer and legend of sophisticated background music. Quiet Forest is now being released on vinyl for the first time. The date is 4 December 2026.
Everything grows in silence
The album originally appeared on CD in 1996. That is now, hard as it is to believe, 30 years ago. And it is Yoshimura’s final full-length. The recordings were made in 1993, inspired by Yoshimura’s visit to the Hoh Rain Forest, which is not in Vietnam, but in the US state of Washington. What Yoshimura reported of his experience is interesting: »Green fronds draped along the branches, like a scene in which fairies could be heard whispering to one another. But when you try to listen, no sound can be heard.«
Perhaps that impression is also one reason why Yoshimura decided, while working on the album, to remove the field recordings from the pieces. Over several years, the composer revised the recordings before the album’s original release. Quiet Forest is now being released exclusively via HHV as a Sunshine Yellow Vinyl Edition.
