St. GIGA - Tide of Sound Archive (90's Japanese ambient/new-age/house radio)

bookmarked, thanks

I'm listening to this this morning. It's like a gift I didn't know I needed.

cheers for this, looking forward to diving in this weekend

Interesting article here in the Twitter thread from the person who released all the music

St. GIGA is all but your usual radio station, the programming was based on the tide table, very ambient and pretty much ASMR compatible. Probably too niche for the time, but nonetheless very interesting.

I have found this article about St. GIGA in detail:https://t.co/qTaL95CLst

— Yakumono (@LuigiBlood) January 19, 2022

great article, thanks

What a wonderful and unexpected treasure trove.

Did anyone recognize the following two songs?
1. The very first one in A dream shade falls-A
2. The one at the end of Angel Stream-A / beginning of B (before Raphael's River Seeks the Deep)

Morning of Light-A is a really nice zoned out lush beach vibe

very whoa, thank you
i need more time

still aoty

yep, listening right now in fact

yeah this was the music event of the year for me

Listening to the first hour. It's good, maybe a little too "new-agey."

give it time, lots of variation within the template

Healing In Dream is my current fave

Thanks for the revive, going to fire up some of this here in a bit.

what I really want is for someone to put the uploaded archive into the proper tidal order, as per the article linked above:

As part of Yokoi’s concept the St. GIGA broadcasts followed no externally fixed program schedule. It was not based on a solar calendar week, where a certain show would recur every Sunday at 7 PM. Instead Yokoi had the genius to base the transmissions around a tide table. Themes for broadcasts were based on a cyclical motif and tried to approximate the current tidal cycle according to the Rule of Twelfths throughout a 24-hour day.

The Rule of Twelfths is an approximation to a sine wave curve. The formula can be used as a rule of thumb for estimating a changing quantity where both the quantity and the steps are easily divisible by 12. It has been typically used for estimating the height of the tide. The rate of flow in a tide increases smoothly to a maximum halfway point between high and low tide, before smoothly decreasing to zero again. The rule is also used to make predictions on the change in day length over the seasons.

Tidal changes are non-linear. This means that in the first hours of a tidal shift the tide might not rise or fall very much, yet as the cycle progresses the rising or falling will accelerate through the mid hours. The Rule of Twelfths applies to the semidiurnal tide - a tide having two high waters and two low waters during a tidal day, which is exactly what happens in most locations. The semidiurnal tide period lasts for a period of 12 hours and 25.2 minutes from low to high tide, and then repeats back to low tide again. The full and new moons also have effects on the tide, as do the first and third quarter moons.
The transmissions of St. GIGA followed this pattern in a unique way, mimicking the swell of the tides and the course of the moon. With his “Tide of Sounds” broadcasting process the end of one show and the beginning of another was not demarcated or clearly defined as folks are used to hearing on the radio. Instead, gradually, using the Rule of Twelfths songs of one genre would flow into and intersperse with songs and material from the prior genre until the new genre, just like a high or low ocean tide, became predominant. Yokoi designed it this way so that listeners could relax into waves of sound "like a baby sleeps in the womb." These "Tide of Sounds" broadcasts operated under the awesome principle of "No Commercials, No DJs, No News Broadcasts, No Talk." If only more radio stations would follow this principle and ethic. Of course this absence of commercials and talk was only possible because the service was subscription based.

Is the City-2 St. Giga label in any way associated with the radio station?

unlikely

I'm glad people are enjoying these recordings! This was definitely the music event of the year for me too.

I listened to all 81 hours of those St. Giga recordings and made:

a big spreadsheet!

I listed each recording with its predominant genre(s) as far as I could tell, as well as a very subjective description of it. I also color coded some of the episodes, along this key:

Green = A+ episode, will go back to this one frequently
Yellow = Standout episode, worth going back to
White = Just another recording, nothing that stands out
Red = Unlistenable due to poor recording or other technical issues.

Again, very subjective here, but you may find it useful for navigating this enormous cache of material.

just as an example of the madness that goes on in these broadcasts, here is my breakdown of Healing In Dream A:

00:00 Paul Winter - Air (plus field recordings)
4:55 ???
10:05 ???
29:40 William Aura - New Dawn (idk this piece, listed as 23 minutes but it's unclear if this is an edit)
35:29 Solitudes - Desert Awakening (environmental record) plus ?? same as above??
39:10 ?? guitar w/effects
45:04 Paul Winter - Morning Echoes
47:40 ??
54:30 Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Wildlife

this was after multiple Shazams, many of which were false

vibing out to Seaside Walk-A now. It sounds exactly like how you'd think

highly recommend - so transportive and peaceful

Whisper in afternoon-B

extremely zen; amazing

this is a bottomless pit of beautiful audio

I still listen to this archive a lot at work. It looks like the station put out a few records:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECWQAdFjqFg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2mC0prsNoE

They put out 12 of those ambient soundscape cds. Really nicely recorded and by far my favourite nature sound releases.

There are 7 of them available online if you know where to seek them. Hopefully one day the other 5 will turn up.

I search for the other five almost daily! Hopefully they’ll pop up at some point. They’re gorgeous recordings.

already in my Discogs wantlist but if anyone wants to ILXmail me details on where I might seek those, it would be awesome

Are the official releases just field recordings? Nothing against field recordings, but I'd love to get some of the actual music from the archive on a proper physical format

loving the archive in the original post

The mixes; the thematically focused flow of music and field recordings overlapping in the archived station broadcasts is museum quality.

it really is

and yeah the official stuff is all their custom made field recordings that they mix in (which, interestingly, seems to really fuck up the auto-song ID apps like Shazam)

there's also this st. giga-adjacent thing:
https://www.fondsound.com/4%E2%84%83-christmas-suite-1992/

ATTN: NYC ppl Visible Cloaks, Yoshio Ojima & Satsuki Shibano: a tribute to St. GIGA Night #1 with Strugglin' + a pre show artist conversation moderated by Sadie Starnes

THANK YOU I am a billion percent there because of course but also because I'll be heading to Japan soon afterwards! What perfect timing.

There's a second NYC night tonight
https://dice.fm/event/m78ev-visible-cloaks-yoshio-ojima-satsuki-shibano-a-tribute-to-st-giga-night-2-with-ucc-harlo-afterparty-featuring-dj-healthy-28th-sep-public-records-new-york-tickets?lng=en-US

Show was great! Only planned on the first night - had a wonderful time.

Could you tell me a little more about it? I'm probably not going since i have tonsilitis, it's far away, it's expensive and i start work at 11pm... but i've been thinking about going for weeks, idk

(it's bacterial, i'm not contagious)

Well there was an interview with Yoshio Ojima & Satsuki Shibano about the origins of St. GIGA which was interesting - nothing mind blowing - but nice to hear about their philosophy behind the concept and the timing, meant to calm anxieties of the Japanese people at the time, the conceptual programming that was intentionally trying to sync up with the tides and the moon etc.

Then Strugglin' came on, did an interesting musique concrète performance that was very good, followed by Visible Cloaks + Yoshio Ojima & Satsuki Shibano playing their material they collaborated on in 2019 which I actually had not listened to before. They had experimental imagery projected behind them as they played and yes they sounded fantastic. Picked up the LP afterwards and got it signed by Yoshio & Satsuki.

Yeah it was expensive for sure but I felt like I had to go due to the obsession with the archives and my trip coming up in a WEEK.

went to this last night too. that summarizes it well tho I personally wish there wasn't an opener, just to keep things moving.

I'd say go if you can. I mean, how many times is something like this gonna happen?

thanks Evan! i didn't make it out there but that record (which i didn't know about) is very nice- none of the FRKWYS releases i've heard disappointed me yet

just got out of this — lovely. opener ucc Harlo was really great too

I'd say go if you can. I mean, how many times is something like this gonna happen?

yeah now that i'm aware of Ojima's and Shibano's role in the original broadcasts, i'm sorry i didn't go. would have had to leave at least 30-40 mins early tho, going on the timestamp on churl's post

^digging into their collaborative discography today and it dovetails nicely with my recent Satie obsession.

Shibano's 'Rendez Vous' my immediate favorite but it's early

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5SEQcJt0vc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrehcTeCXS4