Journal for People:Takagi Masakatsu

Artist: Takagi Masakatsu

Date Released: April 4, 2006

Label: Carpark

Produced By: Takagi Masakatsu

Tracklisting:
 * 1) Uter 1
 * 2) J.F.P.
 * 3) Uter 2
 * 4) Piano
 * 5) Ketle 1
 * 6) Ketle 2
 * 7) Ketle 3
 * 8) Wonderland
 * 9) Birdland
 * 10) Aqua
 * 11) Waltz
 * 12) Salida del Sol
 * 13) Light Song

Review: In my opinion the aural and visual worlds are very closely connected. Especially in our current ipod/headphone dominated society, properly soundtracking every waking moment has become a daily obsession for most of us music lovers. Modern music needs to not only stimulate our ears and minds, it needs to affect our visual surroundings, it needs to skew the subjective view of our current environment. Kyoto, Japan’s Takagi Masakatsu understands this more than most, especially thanks to his multimedia background, and his music sublimely reflects it. A classically trained pianist, multimedia documentarian and art-gallery exhibiter, Masakatsu creates visually stimulating compositions of finely manipulated melodies and fluttering ambient soundscapes. Released on Todd Hyman’s always amazing Carpark label, ‘Journal for People’ is an hour-long compilation of soft piano cadences, minutely diced instrumentation and oddly timed layering that owes as much to Alice Coltrane as it does to Aphex Twin. If you get a chance, you should really sample the accompanying DVD at http://www.takagimasakatsu.com/ to really get the gist of Masakatsu’s frame of mind. I highly recommend this album to anyone into ambient music, minute glitch or even more atmospheric jazz. Mpardaiolo