A cute and wholesome bit of performance art from the Japanese ambient music pioneer.

This archival video comes from one of our favorite music blogs Fond/Sound and is the only footage we’ve seen of the genius “environmental music” composer. You likely know Yoshimura from the gorgeous ambient textures and melodies on his cult classic albums Green or Music from Nine Postcards. This performance offers none of that, and instead features Yoshimura playfully running around a park, creating a sort of plastic bag bird, and then calling out to it through a megaphone. There’s a bit of drumming later on in the performance as well. Of course, instead of drums, Yoshimura uses cardboard boxes that look like they originally contained home electronics. It’s all just incredibly pure and a blessed moment for those in the audience and us watching from our phones/laptops decades later…