Nobody ever gave him the room

On September 23 we are playing Hiroshi Yoshimura's Green, on vinyl, front to back, inside a Sedona vortex. As far as anyone knows this has never been done. Five o'clock at the Humankind Centre.

There is a photograph of him, on his label's own page, sitting on a guardrail at the Grand Canyon in shorts and hiking boots. Head tipped back. He is looking up at the sky, not down into the hole everybody else photographs. Two hours north of the room we will be sitting in. Nobody can tell me when it was taken or why he was there.

Listen runs the way humans are meant to experience sound. Sound bowls first, to clear the mind before anything plays. Then the story, the record, the artist, why it matters. Then the album, beginning to end, nobody talking over it. Then stay as long as you want.

The idea is always the same. An important record, played whole, in an environment that changes it. The room does half the work.

Humankind sits on the ley lines people fly across the world to sit in. It is the hub in this town, where the speakers and the researchers and the experiencers all end up. Crystals set in the floor, tachyon charged walls, a capacity rated for 55 people lying down. Whatever moves through Sedona moves through there. Aliens are welcome. We will have the blankets.

And I think he would have wanted this.

Yoshimura worked in kankyo ongaku, environmental music, writing pieces built to belong to a place. The album he made alongside Green that same winter was commissioned as a fixture for new houses, and in his notes he asked for it to be heard next to footsteps, an air conditioner, a spoon in a coffee cup. He wanted the room mixed in.

On the Green sleeve he says what he really wants is for it to be "listened to intently." He died in 2003, barely known outside Japan. Nobody ever gave him the room.

He came to Arizona. We will bring his spirit back.

Listen. September 23, 5pm. Humankind Centre, 1730 W State Route 89A, Sedona. One album. On vinyl. In the vortex.