Inspired by the R&B music of Otis Redding, Kitaro( Masanori Takahashi ) taught himself how to play guitar. He says of teaching himself, "I never had education in music, I just learned to trust my ears and my feelings." While attending Toyohashi Commercial High School, Kitarō organized the "Albatross" band with his friends. At that time, they performed in parties and clubs. "In high school, I was in an amateur band. I started out playing the guitar but then changed to the keyboards. Before one of our gigs, the drummer was injured. I had no experience at all on the drums, but I had to learn it because I was the leader of the band, and we had to do the gig. My drumming was not very good, but we got through the show in one piece. Later, the bassist had injuries, so I had to learn how to play the bass. [These accidents are] the main reasons why I can play all these instruments; I had a crash course in how to play them. It was a hard time for me, but a very good experience. It created the base knowledge of all the instruments.
After graduating, I really wanted to be in the music business, so I moved to Tokyo and started looking for bands to play with. I basically did it for the experience and to get a feel of all the clubs that were available in Tokyo and Yokohama. At that time I played keyboards, and then I discovered the synthesizer. In the early '70s Kitaro joined the band "Far East Family Band" and toured with them around the world. In Europe he met the German synthesizer musician and former Tangerine Dream member Klaus Schulze. Schulze produced two albums for the band and gave Kitaro some tips for the use of synthesizers. In 1976 he left the band and travelled through Asia (China, Laos, Thailand, India).
Back in Japan Kitaro started his solo career in 1977. The first two albums Ten Kai and From the Full Moon Story became cult favorites of fans of the nascent New Age movement. He performed his first symphonic concert at the 'Small Hall' of the Kosei Nenkin Kaikan in Shinjuku, Tokyo. During this concert Kitaro used a synthesizer to recreate the sounds of 40 different instruments, a world's first. But it was his famous soundtrack for the NHK series "Silk Road" which brought him the international attention.
Kitaro's style is the epitome of the contemplative, highly melodic synthesizer music often associated with the new-age movement. His first solo album, Astral Voyage, appeared in 1978 and quickly gained a cult following. Two years later, he produced the first of several soundtracks for Silk Road, a Japanese television documentary series that ran for five years. Several albums of music from Silk Road were released to a growing international contingent of fans who admired his combination of lush, majestic textures and gentle, almost naive, melodies. Kitaro, however, was still considered an underground artist in America until he signed with Geffen Records in 1986, which re-released seven of his earlier albums and gave him the support to expand his scope in many ways. For instance, after years of creating albums in the privacy of his home studio near Japan's Mt. Fuji, Kitaro produced his 1987 release, The Light of the Spirit, with the help of Mickey Hart. The album featured an array of American musicians and was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best New-Age Performance category. That same year, Kitaro also made his first live tour of North America and sold two million albums in the U.S. alone.
In 1988 his record sales had soared to 10 million worldwide. He was nominated twice for a Grammy award and his soundtrack for the movie "Heaven & Earth" won the award for best original score. He won another grammy award for his album Thinking of You in 2001. Kitaro's style had changed as well, becoming more theatrical and assertive while retaining a certain level of innocence and purity. His more recent recordings also show a renewed interest in the rock and pop elements that originally attracted him to music in the late '60s; in 1998, he also released the soundtrack to Cirque Ingenieux, a production bound for the Broadway stage. Thinking of You followed a year later; Ancient appeared in spring 2001. It was well received, leading to a sequel of sorts in the like-minded Ancient Journey in 2002. His contributions on the soundtrack to the controversial Chinese drama The Soong Sisters came out the same year, as did a live album and DVD.
"This music is not from my mind, it's from heaven, going through my body and out my fingers through composing. Sometimes I wonder. I never practice. I don't read or write music, but my fingers move. I wonder, 'Whose song is this?' I write my songs, but they are not my songs."
Kitaro
Kitaro
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Kitaro - Astral Voyage (78 ^ 99mb)
After the break-up of the Far East Family Band - following the recording of Parallel World - keyboardist Kitaro retreated to the Japanese countryside, something which shows in the pastoral shadings of this album. The fade in to “By the Sea-Side,” for example, takes upwards of a minute before even the most gentlest of sounds is heard amongst the samples of tidal shores softly buttressing this aural shoreline. Feverish electronic chattering beaches itself upon this most peaceful of musical environments, as the tide ebbs out, leaving only a high whistling synth-line to accompany these chimp-like mutant electro sounds. A peaceful Japanese melody sounds out, joined eventually by a brand new tidal undertow borne out of huge chordal swipes of string-ensemble synthesisers. Aqueous bubbles of electronica fizz all around, as if to keep the (sub-)marine sonic metaphor intact......Last Track “Astral Voyage” begins with a raucous (free-)drum’n’biwa space raga, before the trance-like synth arises once more - a slow moog sonnet - with fireworks displays of synthetic noise being blasted over to the beyond, spectral string instruments are occasionally hit, strange wind instruments blown, and still the elegiac melody holds court, the occasional hint of a choral emerging out of the mist - it’s a monument of seventies kosmiche exploration. What's inbetween ? Go figure.. just a click or two away.
01 - By The Seaside (6:00)
02 - Soul Of The Sea (2:40)
03 - Micro Cosmos (4:50)
04 - Beat (4:50)
05 - Fire (7:12)
06 - Mu (5:10)
07 - Dawn Of The Astral (5:10)
08 - Endless Dreamy World (3:28)
09 - Kaiso (4:34)
10 - Astral Voyage (8:00)
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Kitaro - Kojiki (90 ^ 96mb)
We learn from the liner notes of this 1990 release that Kojiki, is from the story of the same name familiar to Japanese school children, an ancient account of the creation of Japan. It is a mythical tale that provides a fitting thematic backdrop for the swelling symphonic flourishes that Kitaro uses liberally on this recording. Accompanied by a pop-rock ensemble, violinist Steve Kindler, and the string section from George Lucas's Skywalker Symphony Orchestra, Kitaro's approach to the Kojiki tales is to focus one the creation stories, starting with the creation of the islands, and climaxing in an intense and lurid dance that lures the sun goddess out of her cave, restoring the light and establishing Japan's royal line.
Kitaro's keyboards and flutes are sometimes submerged in the mix, perhaps lost in the Celestial Rock Cave or swept away under the Bridge of Rainbows, but the intended attraction here is the widescreen flash and pop-orchestral dash generated by more than two-dozen pop and classical musicians. Overall, it may be a bit heavy-handed for New Age fans and a touch too pretty for progressive fans. The most effective piece is the disc's concluding work,"Reimei," a sweetly stirring, bell-chiming anthem. Overwrought to some, a masterpiece to others.
1 - Hajimari (3:33)
2 - Sozo (5:35)
3 - Koi (6:30)
4 - Orochi (7:07)
5 - Nageki (5:45)
6 - Matsuri (9:00)
7 - Reimei (8:37)
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Kitaro - Cirque Ingenieux ( 97 ^ 157mb)
Cirque Ingenieux was the first Broadway score that Kitaro made, and it's one of his most ambitious projects. The play is about a young girl who falls in love with a circus and discovers the strange, wonderful, occasionally haunting world of the cirque ingenieux. There is no dialogue to the play; it is told solely through visuals and music, which makes Kitaro's score integral to the success of the production. He rises to the challenge, drawing from not only classical and worldbeat sources, but also contemporary styles. The result is a swirling, intoxicating array of sounds that are both enchanting and haunting.
01 - Cirque Ingenieux
02 - Sarah's World
03 - Solar System Trapeze
04 - The Tailor
05 - Costume Shop
06 - Wall Of Masks
07 - Contortionists
08 - Winter Waltz
09 - The Wizard
10 - Galina
11 - Underworld
----1 - Parade Of Riches
----2 - Court Performers
----3 - Palace Dance
12 - Strength
13 - The Escape
14 - The Bottom Of The Sky
15 - Double Lira / Finale
a lite version
Kitaro - Cirque Ingenieux ( 97 * 99mb)
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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !
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