The musical rain forest of Takako Minekawa & Dustin Wong
Savage Imagination, a cooperation between Japanese singer Takako Minekawa and American guitarist Dustin Wong is one of Japan Times‘ favorite albums of the year. I checked it out and was immediately hooked by the babbling creek that this music is. An exhilarating descent into a tropical rain forest of colorful birds and musical flowers but without the poisonous snakes. A fairy tropical rain forest.
There’s a plethora of musical and cultural influences here, from folk to classical Chinese to new wave and electronica with African riffs and there’s so much here, like a kaleidoscopic, musical Christmas pudding full of easter eggs. So rich, so full and yet so light and easy to like.
It’s kind of like the Tom Tom Club, isn’t it, only much more varied, with so many more layers and, this may sound a little odd, but it reminds me of Schubert a lot also. Hence the ‘babbling creek’. What a nice surprise.
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