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. Further down the strip, under the track list, in small type, there is one more line. Composition, arrangement, performance, recording: Kitaro.

That was the balance between the two of them. 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 waits until the end of the sentence.

Where it sits in the history of music

How Kitaro got here is in Kitaro, where to start. The short form: in 1975 he met Klaus Schulze in Europe, and Schulze produced two albums for the band he was in and showed him how to handle the 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 puts it second. It is the one before the fame, and the closest he came to Berlin. Read the back of the sleeve and there is nearly only one name on it. He played the Korg, Roland and Yamaha synthesizers, and he played the acoustic guitar and the percussion as well. He programmed the sounds and he 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 use those numbers to find your way around the record.

Three pieces, as they go

"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 English title, "Morning Prayer," is the truer one. So don't wait for the sun to come up. Listen at the pace of a prayer. These six and a half minutes set the stride of the record, and the two pieces under three minutes that follow pass quickly over it.

"Cosmic Energy" (8:09). The longest piece here and the one the guide picked from this record. The Japanese title is 「宇宙エネルギー」. The thing to hear is the length itself. After two pieces that finish inside three minutes, this one takes eight. Holding one idea for a long time and changing it a little at a time is the method Schulze handed over, and this is where it survives most plainly on the record. Don't watch the clock. Mark for yourself the moment the piece stops sounding the way it started.

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

The rest of the record

The short pieces are worth reading before you hear them. "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 take turns, so skipping the short ones cuts the long ones' breath short.

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. Hear one through, then turn it over.
• With the cover beside you. The painting is what the obi sold 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. In the title of this programme, Kitaro's name leads.

Europe met the record with 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 of Deuter and Terry Riley, and that 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". Say in advance 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 had turned around.

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.

AmazonKitaro Oasis on CD and vinyl.DiscogsEvery pressing of Oasis, from Canyon C25R0030 in 1979.

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