Bleep

For their 50th release, Music From Memory explored the fabled club chillout room, where the worlds of ambience and dancefloor bled into each other during the 1990s. Virtual Dreams I understood ambient techno/house as a pre- and post-club phenomenon; four years later, the label show these sounds in a different light on the series’ second volume, zeroing in on the Japanese scene where “listening techno” was the main event.

Compiled by Eiji Taniguchi and the late MFM cofounder Jamie Tiller, Virtual Dreams II is a roundup of harmonically and melodically rich tracks from across the board: icy yet forested four to the floor grooves, cascading percussion with bleeping tones, idyllic guitar plucks in aquatic atmospheres. The opening cut ‘Blown Fruit’ by “breakbeat unit” Dub Squad bubbles with dub bass and gently evolving layers of melody. Barely there rhythms lie beneath the soundscape, before rising as organic, skittering beats and swishing pinprick synths.

Further explorations find the acid synth manipulations and fluttering pianos of Akio / Okihide’s ‘Phoenix At Desert’, or the gamelan styled harmonic percussion and glistening chimes of Yukihiro Fukutomi’s slowburning ‘5 Blind Boys’. Riow Arai (who would later collaborate with Mego artist Tujiko Noriko) provides a lush, sci fi wash of melodies with spacewalk recordings flitting about a patient thump on ‘1969’, while the accordion like synth exhalations and distant folk chorus of Ambient 7’s ‘Escape’ come down to Earth, met with pulsating bass, gurgling high pitched tones, and whirring beats.

Virtual Dreams II presents a vital recount of a scene where ambient music took the centre stage right from the beginning.