Yasuaki Shimizu
Music for Commercials

"Made to measure" was an experimental spin-off of the Belgian label Cramned (the ones of Minimal Compact, Tuxedomoon, or Colin Newman's solo work, to be clear).
Collected in volumes, the series featured electronic-ambient experimentalism.
And so last year, in the midst of a—fortunately ended—obsession with buy everything, buy vinyls, there's something compulsive in all this, I brought home a reissue of "Music for commercials (Made to Measure vol. 12 - 1987)" by Yasuaki Shimizu, hoping I had purchased one of those things that go unnoticed and then become something like I have it, and you don't!
In the end, many authoritative sites elected the work as the best reissue of 2017, best here and best there, hooray for the thirtieth anniversary.
It didn't go unnoticed, no. And indeed, it's fitting.
Shimizu is considered one of the greatest saxophonists in the world. He feeds on saxophone and electronic knobs.
An artist who reached his peak in 1982 with "Kakashi": a sort of icon of contemporary Japan-thought where free jazz, electronics, and madness give birth to one of the most interesting Japanese albums ever.
Around the figure of the composer, one can recognize the best of contemporary Japanese ensemble (from Kazumi Watanabe to Sakamoto) and a track record of genius musical choices, including a neurasthenic and very courageous tenor saxophone reinterpretation of the Goldberg Variations.
Meanwhile, like a Brian Eno with almond eyes, he had perceived that advertising music represented a sort of aesthetic opportunity.
If you think about it, writing thirty-second musical motifs that manage to do their job isn't all that easy.
Brian Eno recounts that to write the startup music motif for Windows 95, he created hundreds of “micro-compositions” of five seconds each, to which he—apparently—remains particularly attached, considering them all structurally dignified (and publicizing them, no?).
Shimizu wrote musical motifs for Sharp, Honda, Knorr, Shiseido, Bridgestone, Seiko.
He wrote them but they were never used by any of these companies to promote their products: the brand was simply a source of inspiration.

In the Eighties, most commercials were composed of “lackluster” music and a sensual voice explaining the product. Sometimes the text was set to music (like the Coca Cola Christmas commercial), on other occasions there was a song (possibly rock-innish) and the company’s payoff at the end.
It was difficult to find an '80s commercial with music and video without a spoken text to support it.
In short, even in the much-maligned world of television commercials, the logics of aesthetic institution and logos prevail.

In this case, Shimizu's work is a purely ambient discourse and recalls the blurriness of Music for Airports, the obsessive patterns of Philip Glass during his Farfisa period, and then 80's verticality where one can sense an unintended “proto-vaporwave,” complete with a manifesto on the concept (never understood why) of critique of consumerism espoused by aesthetic thought enthusiasts.
In reality, I don't think Shimizu was interested in giving a green light to a strict critique of the spend and splurge of the Eighties. He simply wanted to imagine how a Seiko watch sounded.
And the result is quite brilliant, although the exact title might have been “Music for brand.”
The record is crafted and produced as our Lord commands. But this holds true for all of Yasuaki Shimizu's works, which sound like few things in the world I've heard emerging from a recording studio and, generally, if you want to hear what the Eighties sounded like, Cramned is a guarantee.

There’s a world to listen to, and I understand it, so I suggest listening to this album for the following categories:

• high fidelity lovers;

• admirers of Japanese music and/or followers of Julian Cope;

• listeners of ambient music and its derivatives;

• personalities whose nervous pathology is not contemplated in the updated DSM.