Back in the long gone days when I was at University a friend told me of a Japanese documentary he'd seen late one night which had great music by someone called Kitaro. As I was always on the lookout for new music I subsequently got hold of my first Kitaro album, Light of the Spirit (on vinyl in those days). It was a few years later that I managed to obtain a copy of Silk Road when I'd finally made the transition from LPs to CDs. This album impressed me so much that I duly got the whole Silk Road series, and annoyingly found that some of them were sold under different titles - for example, Silk Road IV and India are the same album. If I'd known that beforehand I wouldn't be stuck with the same music under two different names! In my opinion the track "Silk Road Theme" is the best piece of music Kitaro ever wrote, if nothing else it's surely what he's most famous for. For a brief time "plucked" tinkling sounds reign before the main melody comes in. Played out on various tones that sound vaguely like some kind of Asian horn it's interspersed with subtle acoustic guitar and fluttering sounds like those at the start of the track. The melody on this piece is one of the most beautiful I've ever heard. Besides having a kind of "set back" quality which helps to convey the sense of a panoramic scene, it's also wistful but optimistic. The album was written to be a soundtrack for the NHK documentary about the ancient silk road trade route through parts of Asia. The listener is thus taken through both the physical and mental landscape, the musical journey focusing on highlights along the route. Kitaro's distinctive electronic new age style is showcased here in all its glory, along with some nice use of acoustic guitar and occasional drums. We stop to watch "The Great River" flowing as heavenly pinging sounds echo away while synth pads and a delicate melody provide further atmospherics. A bit further on is the suggestively named "Flying Celestial Nymphs" on which flutey melodies soar across the soundscape while guitar fills in with easygoing and unobtrusive strumming. Celestial tinkling sounds which are often used on the album under different guises form a sequence on the final track "Everlasting Road". Aptly this is the longest track (though less than six minutes); on it stretched out synth lines create the farewell melody, building up to a flourish with wind like cymbal sounds at the denouement. Kitaro is rightly renowned for this classic new age album which might never have existed if it weren't for a TV programme. Perhaps demonstrating that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery it's been given an orchestral treatment in the London Symphony Orchestra's Silk Road Suite. Fans will be pleased that there are two versions of "Silk Road Theme" on that album (one an andante), and for good measure there's an outstanding and extended version of the piece on Ten Years (a best of album covering the ten years between 1976 and 1986).