MUJI BGM

August 31, 2018 10:06 PM

"Released in the year 2000, BGM 1980-2000 was a compilation of all the background music MUJI had commissioned a select bunch of Japanese musicians (and a wayward Penguin Cafe Orchestra violinist) to soundtrack their stores, all the way to the year of its release."

previously: "Watering a Flower (花に水) is a cassette of ambient synthesizer music by Haruomi Hosono"
previously: the resurgence of Japanese ambient composers

posted by the man of twists and turns (9 comments total)

I just bought some Haruomi Hosono reissues! Gonna have a listen to this in the morn.
posted by gucci mane at 10:45 PM on August 31, 2018

There are a bunch of Muji inspired playlists on Spotify. Suddenly it sounds like I should be buying a plain gray sweater.
posted by Keith Talent at 11:59 PM on August 31, 2018

This is great! However this line…

With IKEA you could leave their showroom, pick up a piece of nicely designed, “modern”-looking furniture, and know that in a few months its shoddy material/make could last you just enough until you get next year’s model.

seems like a bit of a misread, a bit of protesting too much on MUJI’s behalf. To stan a li’l bit: IKEA doesn’t aspire to the notion of “no brand” in its aesthetics, but their furniture goes for a certain kind of stylish simplicity. It certainly isn’t pitched as something you throw away after a year.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:15 AM on September 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

For me these have been the perfect soundtracks to work allnighters and other deadline craziness. The current Muji soundtracks however (at least in Japan) consists of random Euro folk music that is unbearable. Who needs another damn Bulgarian choir chanting when you're browsing for pencils? Really off putting.
posted by ouke at 2:21 AM on September 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

Muji used to have in their catalog a series of somewhere around 10 CDs of music from their stores. It was tempting but there was no way to preview them and at $10 per disk, completionism would get expensive fast.
posted by ardgedee at 4:19 PM on September 1, 2018

fwiw, the first two tracks of BGM 1980-2000 are the "Watering a Flower" album FPP'd almost exactly one year ago. (The third track in the YouTube video is tacked on from the Muji BGM album, making this backreference a little circular.)
posted by ardgedee at 5:44 PM on September 1, 2018

Continuing to listen to this... Hosono's tracks aside, Disk 1 is so 80s it hurts.

I'm only into a little of Disk 2. So far, if a voice were to periodically interrupt in with "Your call is important to us! Please stay on the line for the next available assistant!", it wouldn't be out of place at all.
posted by ardgedee at 6:27 PM on September 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

god, I love the muji aesthetic and the philosophy. I wish there was one closer than Toronto
posted by rebent at 5:16 AM on September 2, 2018

The third disk, attributed to Seraphim, might be the best of the three for casual listening. While it's about as light and innocuous as the second disk, it's playful and lacks the feeling of institutional monotony that the rest of the collection has (other than Hosono's tracks, which are difficult to grasp onto because of their simplicity, but they are not monotonous).
posted by ardgedee at 9:42 AM on September 2, 2018