Album Review: Kaito / ‘Trust’ (Kompakt)
Dec 23rd, 2009 | By admin | Category: Music Reviews
Hiroshi Watanabe, the man behind Kaito’s blissed-out productions, has been effectively M.I.A. for the past couple of years, releasing a pair of mix CDs in his native Japan and not much else. It’s a shame, as he always managed to set himself apart from Kompakt’s core stable, insisting on producing tracks that sounded like his and his alone. Kaito fans are in for a treat, as he’s finally emerged from his studio with his third longplayer. Dubbed Trust, the album finds him operating in familiar territory, burying his deep house grooves beneath layers of widescreen ambiance and burbling melodies, borrowing as much from Kompakt’s signature schaffel rhythms as he does from their meditative pop ambient experiments. Sadly, the end results are a bit predictable. Sure he manages to approximate his trademark trance-like euphoria without falling into that much-maligned genre’s cheese-filled abyss, but it ends up feeling like we’ve heard it all before. The bottom line: Trust will definitely satisfy his fans, but in order to keep the Kaito project relevant, Watanabe needs to inject some evolution into his sound.
Carl Ritger
File under: Thomas Fehlmann, James Holden, Michael Mayer
