When Japanese artist Masayoshi Fujita was invited to create the soundtrack for Expo 2025’s vast living nature installation, Forest of Tranquility, he immediately envisioned a relaxing public space in which visitors could tune out the noise and restore their energies. Inside this green open-air sanctuary – visited by millions of people during the landmark Osaka event, which ran for six months – stood a central pond and 1,500 real trees, all rescued and repurposed from Expo’s former ‘70 site and other parks in Osaka. Fujita set about deepening the listener's connection to the complementary ebbs and flows of the natural world using dynamic shifts and gentle arcs to shift the mood. The result was a living tapestry that mirrored the surrounding forest, with nonlinear patterns and textural twists and turns — creating a portal into the unexpected.
It’s from this honourable commission that Fujita’s new album for Erased Tapes, Forest of Tranquility, grew. Like the Japanese kankyō ongaku (environmental music) pioneers Hiroshi Yoshimura, Midori Takada and Haruomi Hosono before him, Fujita makes gentle, mind-massaging music intended to blend harmoniously with its environment. For Expo ‘25 visitors, this synchronicity – the forest setting intertwined with its associated sounds – would have bettered their experience of being outdoors; for at-home listeners, this synergy now takes the form of a serene transportive pod, capable of taking you anywhere you wish.
On the follow-up to 2024’s Migratory LP, the organic resonance of Fujita’s acoustic instruments – marimba, vibraphone, and percussion, with Armenian duduk from Hayk Karoyi and Japanese shō from Mattias Hållsten – acts as a showcase of nature’s design. Field recordings of birds and frogs make a hidden home among its branches and broad leaves, and bring the album’s biomimicry and ecological quality into even sharper focus. As do the atmospheric drones and burrs of white noise that evoke the wind whipping through the mountains. But, mainly, the objective was to carve out a roomy soundworld for reflective thought. “I wanted to have a lot of space in between the sounds,” says Fujita.
