Tomita - Snowflakes Are Dancing

The older I get, the more new age I find myself listening to. I've found a few Tomita records on my sojourns into the world, and they're always a welcome addition to my collection. "Snowflakes Are Dancing" was Tomita's first record to get released outside Japan, his first release on RCA Red Seal, and the first of his five 70s records adapting classical music for the synthesizer. Here, it's Claude Debussy, channeled into quadraphonic Moog. It's just great stuff.

For dorks only: this was ripped from the 1991 CD reissue, produced with Dolby Surround encoding. So, you know, if you still have a hi-fi, feel free to get real loud and blow this out. The later editions have some corny looking artwork that I can do without; honestly, I'd prefer a color scheme on this one that was more in line with the aquas and greens present in the original 1974 art. But if you want to get really buck wild, Music On Vinyl released a 180g reissue of this earlier this year, featuring the original record on crystal clear & white marbled vinyl. It looks pretty sweet, and I'm sure sounds the same.

Discogs

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Tomita ‎- Live At Linz, 1984 (The Mind Of The Universe)

It's the fifth of the month, and the rent still due, but let's look to the future, shall we?

In a step away from my normal fare of "three chords and the truth" (let's be fair, it's more "two chords, a blast beat, and an haiku"), I thought I'd share a recent obsession. It's Japanese electronic artist and composer Isao Tomita, whose back catalog is mostly, sadly and unfairly out of print here in the States. Now, I'm not a streamer, so I've no clue if you can just whip up something like his recording of Holst's "The Planets" on Spotify. But I've turned up a few of his recordings on vinyl, CD, and tape recently, and I think it's worth checking into.

Brian Eno (rightfully) gets a lot of credit for originating/popularizing ambient music, but Tomita contemporaneously served as a counterpart to Eno and Wendy Carlos, bringing synthesized sounds to the music listening public in the 60s and 70s. Tomita composed music for Japanese gymnasts and anime soundtracks, adapted composers like Mussorgsky and Holst, and made a record of 60s pop and rock standards...basically as a Quadrophonic demo for Sony. Without knowing it, I heard his music first as a kid, watching "Star Gazers" and hearing him adapt Debussy for the theme song. Hell...he even did the theme for the "Zaitoichi" TV series.

ANYHOWWWWWWW...

In September 1984, Tomita performed live at the Ars Electronica festival on the bank of the River Danube in Linz, Austria. The program was nothing but bangers: Holst, Stravinsky, Wagner, Vaughan Williams. Even John Williams' theme from "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" made an appearance. It's a pretty awesome concert, the sort of thing that you could play a kid and made them fall in love with composition and the classical tradition. I wish I'd heard it in full when I was 8...or seen it live.

RCA hasn't reissued this anywhere since 1991, which I think sucks. See for yourself. I assume, as a purveyor of the finer things in life, like 20-minute long records with 30 songs, and forgotten Italian giallo movies, you'll probably dig this.

Discogs

Click here to download.