Listen to 82 hours of groundbreaking ambient radio from the legendary St. Giga’s “Tide of Sound.”

File under: the internet is wonderful… Here’s a recent discovery that will likely take us years to fully digest: Nearly 82 hours of “Tide of Sound,” a 24-hour program on the experimental Japanese ambient radio station St. Giga, are available to listen on Archive.com. Founded in 1990 by Hiroshi Yokoi, St. GIGA was a high-concept, commercially funded Japanese satellite radio station that developed a unique approach to its programming: Broadcasts followed no externally fixed (or artificial) timetable. Rather, they were based upon the cyclical motif of a 24-hour “tide table“ where broadcast themes were approximately matched to the current tidal cycle.

The concept was apparently inspired by The Sirens of Titan, a science-fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. The following message (translated from the image above) is provided as a backstory behind St. Giga’s aquatic ambient transmissions:

• A small planet, St. GIGA. There is a mysterious life here. Harmonium.
• The harmonium is a nostalgic form of life. The harmonium cannot hurt or be hurt.
• The harmonium knows nothing of anxiety, anger, ambition, or youth. The harmonium, a life without a home, knows only the following words: “I’m here.” “You’re here. I’m glad you’re here.”
• The harmonium lives on the song of the stars, and when it encounters a beautiful sound, it shines aquamarine blue. The harmonium lives on the sound of the birth and death of the galaxy, and the sound of the rain that has fallen for tens of thousands of years since it was born.
• We have listened carefully to the birth of life on the sea. And we have been touched by the music of the water planet, and have continued to emit the same mysterious blue color. When you listen to the wind points, when you are surrounded by encouragement, when you look up at the moon and listen carefully, do you ever feel the glow of the harmonium within you?
• St. GIGA, listens to the beautiful song of our Blue House, the Earth, and listens to the various living things, the sea, the flowers and water.
• I speak to the harmonium sleeping within you. “I’m here,” “I’m glad you’re here.”
• To make this planet shine even more beautifully and blue… And to make this planet continue to sing its beautiful song forever, St and GIGA were born for that purpose. The light of the small harmoniums came together.
• “I’m here.” “I’m glad you’re there.” We are St. GIGA.

Sonically, the programs followed a liquid mixing method of selection where songs of one genre would gradually flow into the next genre until the new genre became predominant. The intent, according to founder Hiroshi Yokoi, was to allow the listener to relax in a wave of sound “like a baby sleeps in the womb.” Programs would also feature extended sections of high-quality field recordings of nature sounds (coral reef, forest, night ambience, etc.) alongside spoken word narration by notable Japanese poets.

Described as “The Sound of the Earth,” St. Giga’s music selections moved from minimal Kankyō Ongaku “environmental music” to choral music and new age into smooth jazz, funk, r&b, and sometimes even mellow house music and downtempo, with the music’s intensity seemingly rising and falling with the tide. It’s a unique auditory experience that pairs quite well with home / office listening, and has some similar touch points to the balearic chill-out sound of Ibiza. Further, while the highly conceptual approach might seem a bit experimental or avant-garde, to our ears, the broadcasts actually deliver a deeply human and organic feeling, expressed through a futuristic sci-fi lens.

One program is embedded below. Listen to the entire St. Giga Archive here.