柳田ヒロ
Hirocosmos

One thing that always strikes me as strange is how, despite the web, despite the Internet, some intricacies of past music remain difficult to find. Difficult to decipher.
Yes, decipher. How else would you behave when faced with Japanese kanji trying to explain what was happening over there in Japan, while here in Europe movements like progressive were being born and evolving?

Well, in Japan (from what I could decipher, knowing barely any English), something similar happened to what occurred in Canterbury. That is, a group of people leaving an imprint, a groove that they themselves, with a myriad of projects and variations, would follow and shape.
So just as the Wilde Flowers were born and died in Canterbury, there were the April Fool in Japan. It was with this group that, at the end of the '60s, the musical career of this Hiro Yanagida, a keyboardist, began.
Now, I don't know much about him, I only know that years ago I happened to find this album available for download somewhere, and I remember liking it so much that it drove me to seek out a physical copy.

The album is a well-proportioned mix of Jazz and Rock, the kind that was made back then when it was still unclear whether one was turning into the other or vice versa.
It opens with a trembling electric piano, accompanied by the relaxing sound of sea waves. But the calm doesn’t last long, and the album soon takes off.
With frenzied synthesizers, shards left behind by Keith Emerson's keyboards, raw guitars, a powerful bass, and even tribal percussion, the record spins quickly in the player. And, while keeping the keyboards at the center of everything, it manages not to be a workmanlike album but an intense schizophrenic journey. An exhilarating up and down, a roller coaster launched among cherry blossoms, suspended among countless branches; towards the end, which resumes the initial trembling calm.

Sure, maybe it's nothing new for those who have already seen and listened to local artists like the Perigeo. But I believe that sometimes even things hidden or little-known can hold surprises.
Even if what hides them are bizarre foreign characters and a net so dense that it lets through very little light.