Kashiwa Daisuke - Program Music I

Program music dates back to the Renaissance period, when composers crafted ideas around specific scenes or tales. Evolving with the help of Ryuichi Sakamoto's radio program, Daisuke compiles an album of two timeless songs (36 and 27 minutes each, respectively), wrapping oriental melodies around two stories. In "Stella", Daisuke captures the celebrated 1927 Japanese children's story, "Night on the Milky Way Railroad" through live piano, guitars, strings and glitched out port-rock beats. The second song, "Write Once, Run Melos" is based on another Japanese animated film, in which a Greek country man, Melos, gets accused of conspiracy against the king. Indeed, both pieces capture the fantastical and magical worlds that exist only in our childhood memories, and it's too easy to lapse back into the past through Daisuke's music which possesses strong lyrical and visual elements.