Solar Ray (Susumu Hirasawa album)

Solar Ray (stylized and subtitled as SOLAR RAY Hirasawa best recycling album Recycled by P-MODEL kernel) is a 2001 remix album by Susumu Hirasawa. The centerpiece of "Hirasawa Energy Works", a project to produce music in an ecologically friendly way, it's heavily marked by a recycling concept.

Overview

In late 2000, Susumu Hirasawa switched cars from the gasoline-powered Citroën Xantia to the hybrid electric Toyota Prius. This triggered an interest in him for sustainable energy, later into the idea of using solar power to make music. To that end, he purchased two 120-watt solar panels from Hokkaido-based renewable energy equipment retailer North Power for 200,000 yen, outfitted his home studio to be powered by them and connected two car batteries to store additional energy, which, combined with energy used directly from the panels during daytime, allowed Hirasawa to work for 12 hours. To further optimize the work hours and prepare for bad weather days, instead of having all equipment turned on, as Hirasawa did in the past, only the ones necessary for what had to be done at a time were on. To this end, the studio was divided into areas: One was for composing/arranging (synthesizer, sampler, laptop, mixer), the other for recording/mixing (digital recorder, mixing console, recording booth); instead of using an Amiga, Hirasawa emulated it through his Windows laptop (dubbing this "Solar AMIGA"). The studio was illuminated by less than 30 small low wattage blue LEDs. Hirasawa's workdays ended when there was no more energy remaining. In total, less than 7 kg of carbon dioxide were emitted during the making of the album.