Kitaro Silver Cloud

Kitaro's masterwork remains this two-record score for a Japanese TV series. His most ambitious themes and involved playing are found here. Kitaro's music is fluid and harmonic, as he blends smooth electronic lines with influences from traditional Japanese music, rock, and the romantic Western tradition. Silk Road is a phenomenal success and very possibly the best Kitaro release. There are incredible transitions throughout the pieces, making this a true masterpiece and a treasure to own. Silk Road, Vol. 2 is the second collection from Kitaro's soundtracks for the Japanese television series of the same name.

Sensitively woven, tranquil textures of sound wash through the mind of the listener on this album from sound master Kitaro. The instrumentation includes synthesizers, slide guitar, mellotron, percussion, tabla and Irish harp.

Kitaro is one of the most popular and influential new age artists of all time, having sold millions of records and toured across the world numerous times, in addition to winning Grammy and Golden Globe awards. His style fuses contemplative, highly melodic synthesizer work with acoustic instrumentation, drawing from Eastern musical traditions as well as folk, classical, and rock influences.

Live versions that are even better than the wonderful album tracks. Stronger synthesizer sounds accompanied by real drumming makes for a very dynamic CD that meanders through atmospheric tempos with every song to reach the marvelously varied guitar and drum crescendos of the last three pieces.

Kitaro's universally acknowledged as the founding architect of new age music. The Grammy and Golden Globe Award-Winning Kitaro has achieved global acclaim over a more than three decade long career with a signature sound and a pioneering fusion of cultures, techniques and spheres of consciousness that are truly his own.

The english title of this 15-track compilation is in fact "Asian Café", and gathers 15 tracks from KITARO's solo albums, up to the great "Ancient" and "An Ancient Journey" albums. It also includes 2 tracks from the "Kitaro's World Of Music Featuring Yu-Xiao Guang" album. As is the tradition with most of KITARO's albums, the tracks are generally linked without pause in sound. This album covers many albums from the "Geffen" label era, without presenting anything unreleased… It makes for an expensive "best of", so perhaps a more affordable album like "Ten Years" or "Thinking Of You" makes for a better introduction this to this man's spiritual music…

New age music and ancient shrines seem to work well together, as evidenced by top-selling concert CDs and videos (now DVDs) by Keiko Matsui and Yanni over the years. Kitaro's idea for a greatest-hits collection performed at the sacred Yakushiji Temple in Nara, the ancient Japanese capitol, is more about beauty and intimacy than sheer spectacle, although it would be fun to imagine this dramatic presentation in its native setting. The music on this double disc was taken from three live concerts in the summer of 2001, the first concerts ever presented in the temple proper. Not that you need the background to be swept away into the dreamy mysticism that defines Kitaro's twist on the universe, but this temple is the resting place of the ashes of Genjo Sanzo, the seventh century monk who walked the Silk Road from Japan to India, returning from India with the sacred texts that introduced Buddhism into China and Japan.