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Jazz Articles about Norihiro Kikuta
Hey Exit: Arm's Reach (Else 3)
by James Fleming
Writers have been creating worlds for centuries. J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen King, H.P Lovecraft, they all shaped worlds and mythologies and civilisations out of words. Few musicians, however, have created new worlds out of their music. Kraftwerk's albums and aesthetics form a unique world of Pop Art, industrialism, rhythms and electricity. But it's a world rooted in reality, in the hardness and definition of this dimension. In 1972, Tangerine Dream released Zeit (Ohr), a record that sounds like a panorama of ...
read moreNorihiro Kikuta: Vegetable Soup
by Mackenzie Horne
In the age of sprawling epics masquerading as jazz records, stumbling onto a concise, minimalist narrative can be a delightful stray from the norm. In the case of Vegetable Soup, a three-composition EP by guitarist Norihiro Kikuta, the music functions as a snapshot, a thunderclap accompanied by a flash of light that illuminates a solitary transformation. Taken together, the tracks weave a short, accessible story of individual growth. The adjective 'simple' often carries unspoken negative connotations, though it ...
read moreNorihiro Kikuta: Oporo
by James Fleming
Like blasts of radio static, the electronics on tracks such as “Into The Tunnel" and “Tuesday" of Norihiro Kikuta's album contrast starkly with the spacious, pastoral acoustics of the aphoristic tracks such as “Prospect Park" and “Hudson Park." So short are most of the tracks on the 14-song tracklist that rather than evoke musical comparisons, they are more akin to the strange lilting poems of Richard Brautigan--where all the gentleness of a meadow breeze is channeled through the stanzas contained ...
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