Watanabe Takashi

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release

4...according to our Brian on Thu 27 Mar, 2008.

I'm reviewing 'Slider' by Watanabe Takashi purely because it's got an awesome digipak sleeve and the music is mental. It's got that gorgeous neo classical thing going on but the spirit of a giggling drunkard. It sounds like it's walking in 20 different directions all at once but get this, it doesn't disorientate you, just delights! If you like Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Yann Tiersen's quirky interludes & our very own Gareth S Brown then this CD of lilting strings, cheeky piano tinkles, crashing drums, joyous brass flourishes & subtle electronic twinges will bring you much happiness. 'Slow Dance' has an Oriental vibe to it actually with manipulated radio interference & some of the most lovely piano but could be Herbert remixing Max Richter such is it's eccentricity. Overall this CD is as mad as a box of frogs but very cohesive & beautifully recorded. One of the most playful, musical albums I've heard. The accessible face of the avant-garde! Having one of these for deffo!

Watanabe Takashi from Osaka commits his work to avantgardistic performance groups, and films on the
one hand, incidently he produces music for stage plays. On the other hand he does also work for the
really big ones – he delivered the background music for commercials on Toyota´s “Lexus”, for the
japanese cosmetic company POLA, and also for Mitsubishi Building Tech Services, Canon Marketing
Japan, as well as for Procter & Gamble whereby he has developed to being an artist not to be thought
away for the advertising industry. Watanabe Takashi is a 21st century avant-classic musician adroitly
shifting between the over- and the underground.
By way of his unique talent in editing classical music he creates a new musical genre one may call
futuristic modern classical music. Counting on experimental execution wherewith pieces of elegance and
grace bluntly reminding of a dancing Pina Bausch come into being, Watanabe Takashi is doing to
classical music what CAN and Neu did to rock music. Watanabe is not only about classic or electronic
music, but an arrant new type of both. Leaving itself channelled candidly and full of curiousity by the
musical pieces the audience is forming as multifariously and progressively as his music itself.

Tracklist:
01. Overture 00:47
02. Omni 06:31
03. Lump 05:43
04. Slow Dance 02:37
05. River Song 03:15
06. General Pause 02:04
07. Distance 02:38
08. The Day Comes Surely Whatever You Do 08:34
09. Simple Line 1 02:07
10. Simple Line 2 02:23
11. Quotation Of Rain Dream 06:47