Oasis

In October 1979 Canyon put out an LP wrapped in a paper obi strip, and the copy on it opened like this: "With an illustration by Shusei Nagaoka, who enchants music fans across America, the endlessly gentle, endlessly widening world of Kitaro." The first name in that sentence belongs to the painter. Lower down, beneath the track list, one more line appears in small type: composition, arrangement, performance, recording, Kitaro.

That was how the weight fell between the two men. Nagaoka had moved to the United States in 1970, set up a studio in Hollywood, and painted the covers of Earth, Wind & Fire's All 'n All and ELO's Out of the Blue. Kitaro was twenty-six, out of the Far East Family Band, with two solo records behind him. On the front, two hands are cupped into the shape of a dune, and water runs out between the fingers. The man who made the music has to wait until the end of the sentence.

Where it sits in the history of music

The road that brought Kitaro here is in Kitaro, where to start. In short: Kitaro met Klaus Schulze in Europe while he was in a band. His official biography places that in the early 1970s; what the dates confirm is 1975. That August Schulze mixed the band's album Nipponjin, and from November into December he produced Parallel World at the Manor studio in England. Kitaro came away knowing how to handle synthesizers. Back in Japan he released his first solo album, Ten Kai, in 1978 and Daichi in 1979. This one followed that autumn, his third.

The guide ranks it second: it comes before the fame, and it is the closest he came to Berlin. The credits on the back come down to almost a single name. He played the Korg, Roland and Yamaha synthesizers, the acoustic guitar and the percussion. He programmed the sounds and engineered the sessions. The recording location is given as "Kitaro's Atelier, Kamakura." The only other hands on the sound belong to Takeo Akiyama, who mixed it with him at two studios in Tokyo.

Tracklist

The original 1979 LP prints no timings at all. The list above follows the 1983 Canyon CD. The timings on the back of the 1982 Kuckuck LP are well off from these; "Cosmic Energy" is listed there at 7:25. Don't rely on those numbers to find your way around the record.

Three pieces up close

"Rising Sun" (6:31). The opener. The English title says sunrise, but the Japanese title, 「朝の祈り」, means morning prayer, and the Kuckuck edition's "Morning Prayer" is the more faithful title. So don't wait for the sun. Listen at the pace of a prayer. These six and a half minutes set the record's gait, and the two pieces that follow, each under three minutes, move briskly on top of it.

"Cosmic Energy" (8:09). The longest piece on the record, and the one the guide chose from it. The Japanese title is 「宇宙エネルギー」. What you are listening to here is the length itself. After two pieces that are over inside three minutes, this one takes eight. Hold one idea for a long time and change it a little at a time: that was the method Schulze passed on, and this is where it shows most plainly. Don't watch the clock. Notice for yourself the moment the piece no longer sounds the way it began.

"Oasis" (6:30). The title track closes the record. Listen for what the nine pieces before it have left behind. The whole album was built from synthesizers by three makers, an acoustic guitar and some percussion, all played by one person. Follow what stays and what falls away over these last six and a half minutes and you get the measure of what one man could do alone in a room.

The rest of the record

With the short pieces, it helps to read the titles first. "New Wave" is 「新たなる旅路」 in Japanese, a new road. "Aqua" is 「無限水」, endless water. "Shimmering Horizon" is simply 「地平線」, the horizon. Kuckuck changed two of those subtitles. Endless water became 「命の泉」, the spring of life, and the horizon became 「光と影」, light and shadow. On side two, "Fragrance of the Nature" (6:48), 「自然の香り」, is the second-longest thing here, and "Innocent People" (3:48), 「無邪気」, comes after it. Long and short pieces alternate, so skip the short ones and the long ones lose their room to breathe.

How to listen

• In the morning. The first piece is a morning prayer. As the guide puts it, if Schulze is night, Kitaro is day.
• On headphones. Through small speakers the sound underneath is the first thing to go.
• A side at a time, without stopping. Side one runs about twenty-five minutes and side two about twenty-four. Play a side all the way through, then turn the record over.
• With the cover beside you. The painting is what the obi was selling first. Look at the hands while you listen and you are standing where a buyer stood in 1979.

What happened next

Six months later, on 7 April 1980, NHK's The Silk Road began. The music was Kitaro's, and the cover of the first soundtrack volume, out that May, was painted by Nagaoka too. The two worked together again on Tonko and Ki in 1981.

Then, on 16 November 1981, NHK put both of them in a single programme, an NHK Tokushu called 『喜多郎&秀星 砂漠幻視行』, roughly "Kitaro and Shusei, Visions in the Desert." Two years earlier the painter's name had come first in the sales copy. This time Kitaro's name came first.

In Europe the record wore a different face. The 1982 Kuckuck LP from Germany has no hands on the cover, only a pale sky over a band of sand colour, in a design by Manfred Manke. Kuckuck was the Munich label behind Deuter and Terry Riley, and its pressing is how Europe came to know Kitaro. Gramavision issued it in the United States in 1985, and Domo released a remastered CD in 1996.

The one track to send a friend

Send "Cosmic Energy". Tell them first that it runs eight minutes, then add one line. In 1979 the sales copy on this album named the cover painter before the musician, and the painter was the man who did Earth, Wind & Fire's sleeves. Two years later, in the title of an NHK programme, the order was reversed.

Water runs out between two hands cupped like a dune. What caught it was one room in Kamakura.

Where to get it

If you want Nagaoka's hands, look for a Japanese Canyon pressing. The 1982 Kuckuck LP has another cover, and the timings on its back are not to be trusted. On CD there is the 1983 Canyon edition, and in the West the 1996 Domo remaster.

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