The Water Garden

Okinawa-born Kojun Kokuba’s The Water Garden was first released in 1993, and proved immensely popular, hence this vinyl reissue, complete with sticker. The early 1990s was when many world music mixes disguised the sounds they sampled as they argued for universal tolerance and world peace. The Water Garden evokes both a past and a present, sometimes focused on the Ryukyu Islands of which Okinawa is part, but often casting wider – to Indonesian gamelan (gong orchestras on the opening track and bamboo suling on ‘A Trip to the Bamboo Forest’) and to filmscapes of Thai islands where waves crash onto sandy beaches (‘Ravine’). Okinawan folk songs meet rock (‘Parade’) and Latin percussion fuses with Japan (‘Gate of Market’). There are hints of characteristic Asian modes and harmonic washes richly wrap melodies. The entire album is synthesized electronica, multi-tracked to provide a technicolour soundscape depicting markets, girls with parasols, dancers, bamboo forests and lotus gardens. This is what many of us listened to as we approached the new millennium, and although not intended for the dance floor, that most likely remains its primary habitat. It would, though, not be out of place in rooms filled with scatter cushions, psychedelic lights and burning incense.