Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Kit Watkins: The Unseen

222

Kit Watkins: The Unseen

By

View read count
Kit Watkins: The Unseen
This sparkling album by longtime ambient/jazz composer Kit Watkins is a summer vacation on a CD, filled with warmth and charm. Watkins plays a wide variety of instruments, acoustic, electronically synthesized, and everywhere in between, and gives us an equally wide variety of pieces in this album. Though it's dated 2000, this work is actually mostly from the mid-90s, with one earlier piece, "Kaleidoscope" from 1985.

For years Watkins has been spinning an urbane mix of jazz, ambient, and echoes of minimalist "classical" music. This set adds in elements from the "East," especially the pentatonic gamelan sound of Indonesia or the twirling harmonies of India and Arabia. There is no attempt to create an "authentic" sound - Watkins uses Asian music purely as inspiration for his own sonic creativity. Metallophones, gongs, synthesized tonal percussion, and bells add a tropical atmosphere. The earlier piece, "Kaleidoscope," is purely electronic, though its pentatonic synthetic xylophone sound fits in with the rest of the pieces on the album. It is eleven minutes of bouncy sequencer transformations.

There are many fine moments in The Unseen , for instance a somber and rather Roach-like passage of ambient drift at the end of track 3, "Logarhythm," and a pseudo-Miles Davis "trumpet" solo in "Veil of Cool," played by Watkins on an electronic sampling instrument which has more range than any trumpet. Other tracks, such as "Windchimes" (track 7) or "Evening Mothra" (track 9) are austere, gentle, and contemplative, leaving the hot rhythms behind in the virtual city for a sound which is as refreshing as a clear pool of shining water.

Track Listing

1. Morning Mothra; 2. Realm 1; 3. Logarhythm; 4. Kaleidoscopes; 5. Veil of Cool; 6. In the Wake of the Unseen; 7. WindChimes; 8. Climbing Circles; 9. Evening Mothra

Personnel

Kit Watkins
multi-instrumentalist

Kit Watkins: VL1 virtual acoustic synthesizer, samples, keyboards, percussion.

Album information

Title: The Unseen | Year Released: 2001 | Record Label: Kit Watkins Music

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante
All In Motion
Dave Redmond
Cat & The Hounds
Colin Hancock's Jazz Hounds Featuring Catherine...

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.