Japanese composer Happy Sad has released a music video for “The Flow of Time,” a track from his album The World Is Grand When We See, released via Epictronic.
“The Flow of Time” combines acoustic piano, strings, ambient synthesizers and environmental recordings. Recordings of flowing water run beneath evolving piano phrases. Ambient synths enter at selected structural points, leaving space for the acoustic elements and field recordings.
Happy Sad cites an indirect influence from contemporary French minimal composers, particularly works that develop limited harmonic material through repetition and subtle variation. That principle influences the track’s emphasis on space, recurring motifs and gradual change.
Field recordings are fundamental to Happy Sad’s work. The composer personally recorded the water heard in “The Flow of Time,” part of an archive of environmental sounds collected over several years.
Happy Sad is the solo project of Hiroaki, a Japanese composer and audio professional who works in the video game industry. He began writing and performing music as a student, with early activity that included café and bar performances as well as demo recordings. His influences include soul, British rock, folk, trip hop, neoclassical music, world music, film scores and literature. His recordings combine live instruments with programmed elements, and his catalog includes seven albums and 19 EPs.
Hiroaki also has approximately 14 years of professional experience as a sound designer and sound director in the games industry. He has contributed to more than 60 projects for companies that include NetEase Games, FunPlus, NHN PlayArt and Noisycroak Inc., with work in composition, sound design, audio direction and promotional video production.
In 2013, his track “Everyday” won the domestic DJ category and advanced to the finals of the CO contest organized by MTV and Lenovo.
More recently, Hiroaki has traveled through 10 countries to record environmental sounds and research traditional instruments. Encounters with displaced communities during those travels have also informed his view of music as a means of communication between people with different cultural backgrounds.