Animating objects with Yama Yuki
ato.archives approaches the record in two senses of the word: as a sonic release and as a document. With a steady stream of sounds and stimuli coming from all directions, what a person chooses to listen to — and not just hear — can be a deeply specific experience. The label’s catalog presents insightful articulations of what that experience could be.
We spoke with ato.archives’ founder, Yama Yuki, who established the label as an extension of his practice in sound collage and ambience. Alongside its releases, he initiates collaborations and events that create new contexts for listening such as the urban ambient festival MIMINOIMI, which he co-organizes with FeLid and kentaro nagata in Tokyo since 2023.
In conversation with him, we explore the symbiotic relationship between recorded music and archives, why physical releases endure, and how intentional listening can be a meaningful interaction with our environment.
What’s the most interesting sound you’ve heard lately?
That’s a very difficult question. For the MIMINOIMI festival this year, we featured a lot of traditional music. We hosted Dhrupad artist So Inoue, who performs one of the oldest forms of Indian continental music, and the Gagaku duo Kishun, formed by Ko Ishikawa and Kahoru Nakamura, who play Japanese court music, alongside other performers working with traditional instruments.
I was intrigued by the sound of traditional shakuhachi, which isn’t coated inside. That gives it a more restrained sound, and varies the pitch in a way that’s difficult to control. I’m interested in these traditional and primitive instruments because they can generate subtle and delicate sounds that are perceived differently in our contemporary years.
Was it your interest in these sounds that led you to start ato.archives? How did it all begin?
I always wanted to start a label and a festival. In 2022, I realized that the Taj Mahal Travelers’ debut album July 15, 1972 was turning 50. They were known for long performances at the beach, incorporating the environment, and that album can be interpreted as proto-ambient music in retrospect. I organized an event celebrating this album and invited the band’s original members, Tokio Hasegawa and Seiji Nagai, to perform with artists from different generations. Later, the recording was released on Room40 under the band name STONE MUSIC.
Around the same time, I met like-minded artists and organizers who shared similar interests and were also keen to dig deeper into the history of Japanese ambient and Kankyō Ongaku culture. That led to MIMINOIMI, which became a way to explore that legacy while also embracing contemporary ambient and experimental music.
These parallel projects became the starting point for ato.archives. It felt like an opportunity to diversify the context of ambient in Japan and look at ambient and experimental music culture from a different angle.
Where does the archive part of ato.archives come in?
First, I would like to explain the meaning of ato. It means “trace” in Japanese and “action” in Portuguese, so it has a dual meaning. I like to think that an action, including artistic creation, leaves a trace and generates a small history. When these actions accumulate, they begin to form an archive. I consider the label to be an expanding archive of fragments of our time. I produce tapes in collaboration with artists and creators, so it becomes an archive of everyone involved, not just me.
Our recent release, Cinema Ouvido, was curated by Maruyama Tetsuya, whom I met in Brazil. He had organized a screening in Japan pairing Latin American films with experimental music, with some of the filmmakers even creating sound themselves. The compilation grew out of that project, exploring how film can become a source of both image and sound. The tape’s design, by French designer Grégory Ambos, added another layer to this cross-disciplinary exchange.
This kind of co-creation across borders and practices is central to ato.archives. Our next release, curated by Taiwan-based modular artist Ryan J Raffa, focuses on modular synthesizer music in Taiwan. Like many of the label’s projects, it developed through conversation, curiosity, and a shared intention to bring lesser-known work into focus.
I collaborate with creators and artists in this way to expose something that isn’t widely known but is being made every day and is worth paying attention to. This helps diversify music contexts and makes them richer and deeper. It’s also exciting for me to discover unique and interesting music I hadn’t encountered before.
ato.archives interprets sound from a contemporary standpoint. Could you tell us more about that?
I believe that art and experimental music can be a starting point for engaging with contemporary ideas or perceptions. By listening to this music, people can become more open to sounds and even to different ideas.
The compilation album monooto: Object-Oriented Music in Japan explores how we perceive the world through sound. It’s inspired by a text written by musicians Shuta Hiraki and Leo Okagawa on what could be considered monooto. In Japanese, monooto means “the sound of an object,” which I translate as “object-oriented music.” For the compilation, I invited philosopher Motoaki Iimori, who studies contemporary metaphysics, to write a short introduction on monooto and add a philosophical layer to the project. Monooto can be seen as a form of musique concrète, but instead of incorporating sound into a composition, it places importance on the object itself and does not render the sound of the object as an abstract entity.
That’s how I explained the concept to the artists invited on the record, including veterans like Masahiro Sugaya, the legendary Kankyō Ongaku and experimental composer. The monooto compilation gathered a lot of sounds that kept the trace or character of the object.
Kankyō Ongaku–is that the Japanese term for ambient?
It usually refers to Japanese ambient music from the 1980’s, particularly the work of artists such as Hiroshi Yoshimura and Satoshi Ashikawa. The term actually dates back to the 1960’s, well before the advent of ambient music. It has a very strong Japanese context. It translates as “environmental music,” a term I’d like to use more nowadays, as it’s easier for people outside Japan to relate to.
Given our current social circumstances, it feels like a fitting time to reconsider our position as human beings. Through environmental music, we can shift our focus away from human-centered ideas and toward engaging with objects and other beings in a different way.
monooto’s tracks were poignant in that way, hinting at Japan’s interior lives. We heard the sound of places that were once inhabited, and even soundscapes of crop fields that may no longer exist in the years to come. With ato.archives, are you planning to do more socially motivated collaborations?
I want to go into sound education. During the MIMINOIMI festival, we organized a sound walk in the mountains where sound artists brought some primitive instruments and improvised while hiking. Not only did we hear sound in a new way, but we also listened more carefully. Sound can be an entry point for new perceptions and sensations, and it can carry educational value. I’m interested in exploring this potential of sound further.
And that brings us back to archives, which are vital for education.
That’s why I say ato.archives is both a label and an archive. I’ve been thinking about why I make tapes and release music in a physical format, even though it may not seem ecological. With online streaming, company policies can change, platforms can be bought at any time, and it also costs money to keep music online. Digital formats are not a stable medium, as the music can suddenly disappear one day.
But with physical releases, the cost is only in the making. After that, they can circulate through society. Five or ten years later, hopefully, people will discover the music and find it interesting or meaningful. To have the object is to create an archive, because you can leave it to the future.
Credits & Acknowledgements
The final image shows iu takahashi performing at MIMINOIMI – Ambient / Week – 2025. Photo by Mayuko Takeuchi.
