Jansen / Barbieri - Worlds In A Small Room

Pan East Records - LP

Electronic / Ambient

I'm very puzzled to see Jansen & Barbieri's 1986 Worlds In A Small Room systematically missing from every "greatest ambient albums" list. Like no one know this record? Really? This is, without doubt, one of the most seminal albums of the genre, recorded in the ice-cold heart of the 1980's. Up there with mainstream beauties by Sakamoto or Eno or confidential experiments turned classics by MFM and al like Gigi Massin's Wind. 

Recorded by two aristocratic names in British pop music,  Steve Jansen - David Sylvain's brothers, and Richard Barbieri - from Japan (the 1980's New Wave supergroup, not the country),Worlds In A Small Room is a miracle happening in the richly furnished Victor Aoyama Studios in, the center of Tokyo, at night, as I'd like to imagine. Unbothered with the narrative obligations of the mainstream projects they were both familiar with, they let themselves wander in sound explorations very similar to that of Hiroshi Yoshimura and the rest of highly celebrated composers of Japanese environmental music composers. I can't say whether they were indeed influenced by the aforementioned records (that were very confidential releases), but considering who they were they obviously knew Hosono / Sakamoto's recordings in that music field (we're talking about David Sylvain's brother here).

However, Words In A Small Room is certainly not a clumsy copy of Sakamoto's Esperanto: though sonically influenced and probably recorded with the actual same pieces of gear Sakamoto used, in the same studio, the LP explores a very different topic, a nocturnal theme never clearly evoked but implied by the original artwork. And these studio sessions by two very capable men eventually resulted in one of the most stunning study of stillness and balance in music I can name. (VG+/VG+)