Yasuaki Shimizu ‎– Music For Commercials album art

Music for Commercials is one strange album. Released in 1987, it features short vignettes composed by Yasuaki Shimizu for, well, commercials. But what would be regular library music is here twisted by a strange Japanese postmodernity, turning the smooth jazz and computerised beats into uncanny ad-pastiche. It’s almost some kind of proto-vaporwave, the missing link, one that sound like “Brian Eno getting lost in Ikea”.

Typographically, it’s really nothing out of the ordinary. Yet, there is something about that heavy ITC Kabel Ultra that alludes to the very sensation that also haunts the music. An odd little funk.