Despite over a decade of reviewing music, I’ve often admitted
\nthere are many genres I have much to learn about. Two of these are
\nnew age and world music. While I am no expert on either of these
\ntypes of music, I do know what I like when I hear it, even if I
\ncannot yet appreciate the subtleties of the songs.<\/p>\n
In the case of Kitaro, we have a merge of both new age and world
\nmusic. His latest release,
\nGaia Onbashira<\/i>, was my first taste of a
\nmulti-instrumentalist who has been called the “godfather of new
\nage”. And while the cosmic aspects went right over my head, the
\nmusic had some moments where it became very intriguing.<\/p>\n
Much of the music on
\nGaia Onbashira<\/i> sounds a lot like songs I heard when I saw
\nthe film
\nDead Man Walking<\/i> – very earthy rhythms backed by plaintive
\nbellows and chants. In some cases, the effect was quite eerie, but
\nit was used to its best effect on “Kiotoshi,” which had more of a
\nrhythm to it. In a sense, you could have almost called it “new age
\nmeets pop” with some of the thunder in the chorus.<\/p>\n
Ethnically, besides the obvious Japanese flavor of the disc
\n(rooted in Kitaro’s home land), there are also touches of Central
\nand South American instrumentations hidden throughout the album.
\nSongs like “Yamadashi” (which opens with over a minute of bird
\ncalls – not the best way to kick off the disc) seem to have a more
\nearthy sound to the instruments. Whether these are synthesized or
\nactual native instruments I can’t tell – but if they’re
\nsynthesized, they’re pretty damn good samples.<\/p>\n
There are only two drawbacks to
\nGaia Onbashira<\/i> that I can think of. First, I honestly don’t
\nthink that a lot of people are going to take a chance on this disc
\n(let’s be honest, had it not been sent to me courtesy of the kind
\nfolk at Domo, I probably wouldn’t have tried it out myself). New
\nage music tends to have a stigma attached to it, driving potential
\nlisteners away from it like garlic to Dracula. But the overall
\npeacefulness of the music tends to be a nice alternative to some of
\nthe sludge we hear on a daily basis, and could be used to, as I
\nsay, clean out the pipes (strange, that’s two reviews in a row I’ve
\nused that phrase).<\/p>\n
However, in this strength lies its second weakness.
\nGaia Onbashira<\/i> is such a relaxing disc that if you’re not
\npaying attention, it’s going to go in one ear and out the other. To
\nget through the disc and achieve the maximum enjoyment from it, the
\nlistener is going to have to carefully listen to it. Songs like
\n“Misty” fade out before you even know it has started – not that
\nit’s a bad track.<\/p>\n
Is Kitaro worth checking out? I will admit, after listening to
\nGaia Onbashira<\/i>, I am a little more intrigued by this
\nmusician, and plan on checking out some of his older work. If
\nyou’re not careful, this disc might instill an interest in new age
\nmusic in you – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing to have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7499],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-39207","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-kitaro","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39207"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39207"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}