This is more the kind of music you listen to at home, on the couch. I wouldn’t say it’s music for being out in nature or going for a walk — that would feel a bit pointless. After all, there’s no more beautiful ambient music than the sounds of nature itself. At home, though, it works perfectly.

Personally, I don’t like listening to music while I’m moving through space or commuting somewhere. I prefer listening to what’s happening around me. Whenever I can, I escape to the seaside or into the forest — though honestly, more often to the forest. And sometimes I see people walking through the woods completely cut off from their surroundings by headphones. Then I think to myself, “Hey, but why?” There are such beautiful sounds all around — birds singing, trees rustling. Especially now, in spring, when nature sounds its strongest.

Recently I was working while listening to this music — sitting at my computer, doing something very tedious — and it worked beautifully as background music.

I need to check what we currently have here. One track on the playlist definitely comes from Aus Isoda – Interwoven. It’s the result of a collaboration between Japanese New Age master Ken-ichiro Isoda and Aus, a young producer from Tokyo, released by one of my favorite European labels, We Release What The Fuck We Want.

It’s beautiful environmental music — a little New Age, a little ambient, lots of field recordings and sounds of nature. Very sentimental, incredibly charming. One of my favorite records and one of the albums I ended up taking home myself.

There’s also a track from the latest Meeting by Chance album, a project by Marcin Cichy from the group Skalpel. A fantastic album that also found its way into my private collection.

Generally, most of the tracks on the playlist come from albums that are or once were available at Sonar, but the pressings have already sold out. That’s just how it goes — beautiful records disappear from the shelves quickly.

That wall is basically a collection of records I recommend, simply like, or that somehow intrigued me and stirred emotions in me. I decided they had to be there so that people visiting me could notice them — because they’re worth it. Besides, the selection changes quite often. On this “curatorial wall of fame” you’ll find records without any genre limitations. That’s because I listen to pretty much everything, and a lot of different things genuinely move me. You can clearly see that in my personal collection and in the store’s catalogue selection.

I have to admit that searching for new and interesting releases is one of the things that takes up most of my time at work. But honestly, it’s also a very enjoyable part of it.

Right now my shelves are bending under the weight of ambient records because I’m at a stage where this genre feels closest to me. A few years ago it was completely different — back then ethnic music, mainly African music, dominated my listening. Two or three years ago I was completely immersed in those sounds. Everything revolved around Africa, traditional music, and various stylistic fusions. I’m especially drawn to electronic music inspired by ethnic traditions — I love that combination.

I also feel that ambient music has become especially necessary for people today. We live in incredibly overstimulating times. Everything happens fast, instantly — Instagram, reels, short-form content. Everything has to last no more than thirty seconds because otherwise we lose focus.

I recently read that for many people even Instagram posts are already too long. People aren’t able to read an entire text because they immediately scroll further. And you can see the same tendency in music. Albums are getting shorter and shorter. Back in the day a record lasted forty-five minutes or an hour; today many albums barely reach thirty minutes.

Ambient music works a little differently, though. It’s environmental music — sometimes reflecting space, sometimes completely filling it. And that’s exactly why it feels so special to me. I feel that ambient can build new emotions and even create memories. As if it recolors them and gives them an entirely different dimension. It calms you down and tries to make you stop for a moment.

Ambient can also become a multisensory experience.

There’s a producer named Hiroki Takahashi, founder of Kankyo Records and owner of a tiny ambient music store in Tokyo, who created a cassette series accompanied by essential oils. The scent becomes part of the musical experience. What’s most interesting is that the whole process actually begins with the fragrance. First the essential oil is created, and only afterward is the music built around it. You turn on the tape player and the diffuser to immerse yourself even deeper in the music. Beautiful. Things like this only happen in Japan.

Over the last few years, ever since Japan became so popular, this music has finally had its moment. And I’m very happy about that, because before, hardly anyone really knew it. Sure, there were people deeply into it — searching, discovering those recordings — but it mostly existed within a niche. Today it reaches a much wider audience, and that makes me genuinely happy. My fascination with Japan also started through music. A fascination that, after my first visit, transformed into something close to an addiction.

What impresses me most is the Japanese approach to work, community, and everyday responsibilities. It doesn’t matter whether someone is a bus driver, a train conductor, or directing traffic — everyone performs their role with full commitment and respect. You look at it and think: “Wow.” Even a conductor walking through a train carriage does everything with extraordinary attentiveness and consideration for others. You can see a culture of responsibility and focus in it. When you’re there, you feel as though the country is taking care of you at every step. Not to mention the beauty of nature. Being surrounded by it helped me understand where the uniqueness of Japanese ambient music comes from.

Japan seems perfectly organized, although I’m aware reality is probably much more complicated and I don’t think I could live there permanently. Still, I’m fascinated by their precision and the way they approach doing things. I get the impression that when a Japanese person commits to something, they devote themselves to it one hundred percent. And you can truly see it, hear it, and feel it.

As my dear friend Piotr Kaliński likes to say, Japan should be prescribed as medicine. I couldn’t agree more.

I think it all began with Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Soundscape 1: Surround. That music was one of the first moments when I truly immersed myself in this world.

Surround is an extraordinary album because it was created as music for the home and commissioned by a Japanese real estate/design company. Interestingly, many of Yoshimura’s albums from that period were funded or initiated by companies connected to design, architecture, or technology. In 1980s Japan there was a belief that modern spaces should have their own sonic landscape — something between music, architecture, and the psychology of comfort.

Back in the eighties, Shiseido released a perfume and asked Yoshimura to create music for the campaign. That’s how Air In Resort came into being. And to me, that’s absolutely incredible. Yoshimura created a fully realized ambient album for a perfume advertising campaign. Beautifully released, conceived as a complete sensory experience. I think this was also the source of inspiration for the previously mentioned Hiroki Takahashi.

So, going back to your question about where my fascination with Japan comes from… among other things, exactly from this.

Some records resonate with me more deeply than others not only because of the music itself, but because of the moment in which I discover them. Sometimes it’s simply a coincidence of emotions, longing, and imagination that music is able to awaken.

That was the case, for example, with Aus Isoda – Interwoven. This album became very close to me because I started listening to it at a moment when I deeply missed Japan. To me, this music sounds like a soundtrack to memories of that country, and one of the tracks could easily serve as the score for a film about Asakusa — one of my favorite districts in Tokyo, where time seems to have stopped in the 1980s. That’s also where Hirayama — the main character of Perfect Days — lived.

Generally speaking, not much happens in these compositions, but that’s precisely where their strength lies. This music opened entirely new layers of imagination and memory within me. It affected me very intensely, while at the same time in an incredibly soothing way.