Recommended Album Release: In a powerful intersection of art and environmental science, sound artist Yoichi Kamimura’s new album, “ryūhyō,” offers a poignant auditory document of Japan’s dwindling sea ice. Released as part of the “Our Ice Series” by label forms of minutiae, the album is a contribution to UNESCO and WMO’s “Art for Glaciers Preservation,” coinciding with the UN’s declaration of 2025 as the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation.
Recorded over four years in Hokkaido, “ryūhyō” translates to “drifting ice.” The album immerses listeners in the unique soundscape of the Sea of Okhotsk, the southernmost region in the northern hemisphere to witness this phenomenon. Kamimura’s microphones capture a world both alien and intimate. Guttural groans, crackles, and squeals of the shifting ice floes mingle with the haunting calls of the rare Blakiston’s fish owl and the otherworldly sinusoidal songs of courting ribbon seals.
The record is a sonic elegy for a changing ecosystem. Locals recall a time when the ice was thick enough to walk on, emitting a whistling sound known as Ryūhyō-Nari. Today, that sound is gone. Kamimura’s blend of aerial and hydrophone recordings presents the new, fragile voice of the ice—a visceral, melting symphony that urges us to listen closely before it fades to silence.
releases July 25, 2025
duration: 37:11 — LP — limited edition of 200
sounds by and around drifting ice (ryūhyō)
recorded, composed, and photographed by yoichi kamimura
shiretoko, hokkaido (japan) 2019 – 2023
Bandcamp: https://f-o-m.bandcamp.com/album/ry-hy