Get your wet boots, we’re going off the salt road with the brilliant Japanese kalimba master and kalimba maker, Bun. Koh-Tao’s Tayu-Tayu is a furthering of a sound you were introduced to in Awa Muse’s wonderful fourth world compilation series, Shio-No-Michi. Here we get a chance to listen to what originally was a four piece kalimba ensemble made up of members Bun, Harish, Sho, and Kyo, flower into a unit taking everything they experienced as world travelers and fuse it beyond, into a new kind of healing music.
Koh-Tao’s roots, arguably, began in the early ‘90s via live performances. In and around Yokosuka, they could be found busking, trying to reach audiences more in tune with the decidedly less “acoustic”-sounding music of the day. Unable to establish much rapport from those listening to their jams, the then unnamed group decided to take a sabbatical and actually travel around the world to further their worldly musical studies.
During the transference of time members like Bun would record minimal tapes like 1992’s 水の惑星 (Kalimba Music) pointing to a new direction forward they could take their folk music, pointing to a new realm of fusion. When the rest of the crew came back from their travels they arrived back with newfound knowledge/instruments of all sorts of “ethnic” colors from around the world — bansuri, didgeridoo, saung harp, and koto (to name precious few) — connecting various traditions (Hindustani, Chinese, SE Asian, African) to their own growing exploration of Japanese folk music.
Ideas gleaned from ambient music started to fill the brains behind Koh-Tao. Then, in June 1997, during a full moon day, they reconvened in the greener pastures of Kanagawa and recorded what would be all the songs for Tayu-Tayu.
Adorning the cover of Tayu-Tayu was an object, a light gourd designed by Bun symbolizing a life force energy from earthen instruments. Translated into the album proper, on tracks like “Rainbow Island” we hear a melange of organic, earthly sounds (water, birds, etc.) take on as second players to the hypnotic ensemble of percussive mallet instruments and native flutes. Mantraic vocals bring to mind the work of R. Carlos Nakai with the Wind Travelin’ Band. Songs like “Shine Dance” introduce talking drums and an actual “classic” rhythm section to create their own kind of floating tantric music with subtle inspiration from various worldly styles.
As a sometime kalimba player myself, I really appreciate the songs like “Amenbo” and “Moon In The Lake” that appear to take advantage of the overtones capable with modified versions of this instrument. On the former you get the inspired inspiration of frog sound mixing with all tell-tale rattles of such adjustments, making the introduction of guest Satoko Ochiai’s vocals something really special — very Codona-like, if you can think back to the best of that great group. The latter is this gorgeous, moonlit cyclical transforming two intertwining melodies (one on wind instrument, the other on kalimba) as brookish pastorales gliding just above some plaintive bass tones.
Tayu-Tayu is a hard album to describe because it sounds like little else I’ve heard. Koh-Tao themselves describe the music here as a play on a theme (water), trying to capture that essence in a simple, nostalgic sound that gently unfurls — almost like water babbling over rocky brooks. Myself, I simply put on the panoramic, vista-setting title track and immediately halt everything else.
Like the best healing music, for the span of its 15 minute length, you do feel a bit of transportation…it’s a different kind of ambient narrative: perhaps to a place far from the city, deep into the forest of one’s mind, pausing right at some hot spring, rejuvenating for a good bit, you’re there getting ready for whatever next season has in store.
You know the deal: “Slow down. Rest. Life’s too short to go too fast, at least, when you have music like this.”