Kitaro: where to start

Kitaro is the one artist on this site whose name reached a general audience. In Japan in the 1980s he was not a cult; he was the sound of television, of documentaries, of the Silk Road, of a certain kind of Sunday afternoon. That popularity is the reason the Berlin purists never took him seriously, and it is the reason he matters. He met Klaus Schulze in Europe in 1975, while Schulze was producing two records for the band he played in and showing him how to drive a synthesizer. He took that home and made it something a hundred million people could hum. Five records, in order.

What to know first. Kitaro is not a sequencer artist in the Berlin sense; the sequence is there, underneath, but the piece is the melody on top, played on a synthesizer lead or a flute, and the melody is pentatonic, which is to say it sounds Japanese even when the instrument is a Minimoog. He is also an album artist of the old kind: the records are suites, they have sides, and the best of them were made for pictures, which is why they are so easy to see.

The five, in order

1

Silk Road

1980 · Canyon · soundtrack to the NHK series

For once the famous record is the right first record. NHK's twelve-part documentary on the Silk Road opened on 7 April 1980 and ran until 2 March the next year, and this was its music. The series is what opened his career. It is also his best-constructed album: short pieces, one melody each, over a slow pulse that anyone who has heard Moondawn will recognise. The opening track, "Silk Road Theme", runs four minutes and twelve seconds, and a whole method fits inside them.

Play first"Silk Road Theme". Then "Flying Celestial Nymphs." Two melodies, one pulse, and you have the whole method.

2

Oasis

1979 · Canyon

The one before the fame, and the most Berlin of his records. Canyon put it out in Japan in 1979; the German label Kuckuck took it to Europe in 1982, and that pressing is how Europe came to know him. "Cosmic Energy" runs just over eight minutes and is the longest thing here; the shortest pieces are under three. The method is still Berlin. The lengths are already Japan. Play it second so you can hear where Silk Road came from and what he gave up to get there.

Play first"Cosmic Energy". Eight minutes, in no hurry. Whatever Schulze handed over is in here.

3

Silver Cloud

1983 · Sound Design · Japanese title 飛雲 (Hi-un)

The peak of the Japanese years and the record fans argue for. Fuller, more of a band sound, and the melodies at their most confident. It opens on "Earth Born", puts the title track "Flying Cloud" second, and closes on "Straight a Way to Orion", seven and a half minutes; "Noah's Ark" goes by in two and a half. If Silk Road is the postcard, this is the journey. Play it third because by now you can hear the difference between his pulse and Berlin's, and this is the record where the difference becomes a style.

Play first"Flying Cloud". The title track, four and a half minutes. You hear the man, not the method.

4

Kojiki

1990 · Geffen · seven movements on the Japanese creation myth

The American years, and the big one. Seven movements on the Kojiki, the eighth-century chronicle of the gods, with the Skywalker Symphony strings behind the synthesizers. It went to 159 on the Billboard 200 and to number one on the Billboard new age chart. It is grand where the early records were intimate, and some of it is too grand. But "Matsuri", nine minutes of it, is the best thing he wrote after 1985, and the whole record is the sound of a man from Toyohashi being taken seriously in Los Angeles. Play it fourth because you need to have earned the orchestra.

Play first"Matsuri". Festival drums, a melody, and a synthesizer solo that still sounds like 1974.

5

Thinking of You

1999 · Domo · Grammy, Best New Age Album, 2001

The Grammy record, and the one to play last because it is where the story goes. Quieter, slower, with more piano and less Moog; the man who learned from Schulze is now, in his mid-forties, making the music people put on to sleep. That is not an insult. It is the destination the whole genre reached in the 1990s, and Kitaro reached it with more grace than most. Play it after the other four and it sounds like a rest. Play it first and it sounds like wallpaper. Order is everything.

Play first"Thinking of You". Piano, flute, and a melody you will be humming tomorrow without knowing why.

What you have just heard

A man handed a German method in 1975, using it straight in 1979, adding Japan to it in 1980 and 1983, adding America to it in 1990, and setting it down gently in 1999. It is the tidiest career arc on this site, and the one that reached the most people. If the Berlin School has a popular wing, this is it, and it is not less serious for being popular. It is just easier to hear.

Save these for later

Tenku1986Beautiful and very slow. After Silver Cloud, not before.

Astral Voyage (Ten Kai)1978His first. Pure Berlin, with a Japanese accent he had not yet found.

Live in America1991The concert as spectacle. Good, loud, not the door.

Where to buy it

• Most of it is on streaming. Hear the five in order first, then keep only what stays with you on a physical copy.
• If you keep it, look for the 1980s Japanese pressings. That is the sound described above; Silk Road and Oasis are deepest there.
• The Geffen-era CDs from Kojiki onward are still common new. They are the brighter remaster, so there is no hurry.
• Original Astral Voyage and Far East Family Band records are scarce and dear. Check them on streaming, and only keep them if you truly want to.