This week, we welcome our twelfth guest mix selection - this time from the enigmatic collector behind the legendary Japanese ambient and environmental music YouTube channel, Should Be Asleep.

For many years, Should Be Asleep has been engaged in an idiosyncratic exploration of Japanese interior design - percussive timbres, unusual drones and intricate rhythms; sounds that have recently exercised such a grip on the imaginations of amateur enthusiasts and curators alike. Functioning as a social hub of sorts for kankyo ongaku environmental music and its many offshoots, this rarefied collection stands as one the most cohesive and impressive archives of its kind freely available online.

This guest mix assembles a collection of music and field recordings in tribute to Kamikochi (a valley/national park in the Japanese Alps) in the summertime, thrusting the listener into hyperreal yet phantasmal realms with its fusion of synthetic and organic elements. There’s a self-effacing preciousness to the ambient works that’s felt in their simplicity and spaciousness; uniquely strange and beautiful tracks that feel pastoral and mystical all at once. A meticulously crafted collection of musical tints, dulcet minimalism, melancholic shimmer and crystalline purity that tiptoes gently backwards in time, time travelling to an untroubled place of serene beauty.

chOOn!!