Kenichiro Isoda Epilogue Vinyl

EPILOGUE is the culmination of more than four decades of music-making by Japanese composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Ken-ichiro Isoda, an album in which environmental sound, electronics, contemporary classical composition and memory converge into a deeply personal late-career statement.Isoda first emerged in 1984, aged 21, when he was invited by Munetaka Tanaka to release his debut album Oscillation Circuit through Sound Process, the imprint founded by Tanaka and Satoshi Ashikawa. Issued as the first title in the Série Réflexion series, the record placed Isoda within the orbit of Japan’s developing environmental and ambient music culture, alongside figures such as Hiroshi Yoshimura, Satoshi Ashikawa and Satsuki Shibano. Although only a few hundred copies were initially pressed, the album attracted the attention of Ryuichi Sakamoto, who selected the track “Nocturne” for an event, and would later be rediscovered as international interest in Japanese ambient and environmental music grew.What followed was never a straightforward ambient career. Isoda moved through video-game music, film composition, classical production, Okinawan music, television and collaborative projects, continually developing an approach in which acoustic instrumentation, field recordings and electronics could coexist naturally. During the 1990s, his series of albums for the Apollon label expanded this language further, combining environmental recordings with orchestration and synthesizers while circulating far beyond the record shop through NHK broadcasts, films, television documentaries, radio dramas and public spaces.More recently, renewed interest in Isoda’s catalogue has brought his earlier work into dialogue with a new generation of listeners and musicians. Oscillation Circuit was remastered and reissued in 2023, while selected Apollon-era compositions were revisited on Majel’s Slumber and the vinyl anthology Beach of the Pliocene. His collaborative album Interwoven with aus, released through WRWTFWW, further demonstrated the openness of a musical philosophy Isoda describes as being rooted in fluctuation, imperfection and organic movement.EPILOGUE brings those threads together while refusing to function simply as a retrospective. The album consists largely of older compositions that Isoda has returned to, reconstructed and reinterpreted from the perspective of the present. Material dating from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s sits alongside more recent work, with new performances transforming familiar compositions into something more intimate and reflective.Opening track “TANEKOMA” was originally composed in 2024 as part of a charitable project responding to large-scale environmental disasters. The title refers to the Izu Robin, a rare bird native to Hachijō-jima, the volcanic island where Isoda lives. Its song, recorded by Isoda in the mountains, becomes part of the composition itself. After a devastating typhoon struck the island in 2025, destroying homes, triggering landslides and cutting local water supplies, the piece acquired an entirely different emotional weight. With access to the mountains still restricted, Isoda does not know the current state of the bird population. The recording preserved here may therefore be the last he made of their song. Placed at the beginning of the album, “TANEKOMA” becomes both document and prayer.Elsewhere, “Circulation 2” develops from a work created around the relationship between forest, sea and the movement of water. Field recordings of mountain streams, rivers and the Pacific Ocean are interwoven with a faint quotation from Debussy’s The Snow Is Dancing, while flutist Dogen Kinowaki replaces Isoda’s original piano melody with a performance that gives the piece a distinctly Japanese sense of place.Kinowaki also appears on a newly reimagined version of “Beach of the Pliocene”, one of Isoda’s most recognised compositions. Originally written in 1990, the track was not initially intended for the album, having already been revisited elsewhere, but repeated live performances with Kinowaki led Isoda to reshape it again. The result is not a restoration of the original but a parallel version with an entirely different character.“STEPS”, first composed for film in 2008, looks back toward the electronica of that period. Its fragmented lyrical construction was inspired by Sketch Show’s “Chronograph,” while its recurring melodion figure retains the simplicity of Isoda’s original home recording. For this definitive version, Tsutomu Sonoda of maya ongaku provides vocals, bringing new emotional and lyrical depth to a piece Isoda had wanted to properly complete for more than a decade.The title track from Isoda’s 1991 New Age album “Yume no Sazanami” is similarly reconsidered. Originally recorded with a small chamber orchestra, the new arrangement replaces elements of the harp and cello with layers of nylon-string guitar performed by