Send "Kaito " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Of the many insults hurled at Jay Leno during his current beef with Conan O'Brien and NBC, the one that most stuck out to me was Nathan Rabin's claim in the Wall Street Journal that Leno "suffers from a terrible dearth of personal demons. [He] is so normal and functional that he's practically a freak." Comedians are self-loathers by nature, and Leno is too well adjusted to be funny, the argument follows. While Japanese producer Hiroshi Watanabe shares no notable similarities with Leno, I've always felt kind of the same way about the music Watanabe makes as Kaito-- his take on deep house, which incorporates elements of trance and minimal, is generally so pleasant and optimistic that it almost seems benign.The more frequent, concrete criticism of Kaito-- who, with clear ties to the oft-maligned 90s trance scene, is something of an anomaly on Kompakt-- it's that he seems to be making the same record over and over. Kaito's breakout was 2002's Special Life, an album that won folks over for its re-imagining of trance as a worthy component of chic modern techno and offered for many a lively alternative to Kompakt's usual stately bounce. Since then, though, Kaito has seemed content resting on his laurels, doing little to tweak or improve upon his signature sound-- a blend of swooshing synths and tightly packed keyboard trills presented in a happy-go-lucky style. Boasting song titles like "Rainbow Circles" and "The Breath of Spring", his latest LP, Trust, mostly follows suit, and will disappoint those who'd hoped Kaito would explore different narrative or sonic threads this time around. But wishing an artist will do what you think he should is a fool's errand, and Kaito's confident enough in his chosen approach to make up for a lack of inventiveness with tracks that carry a good amount of punch. On "Spring" and "Nothing Could Be More Peaceful", he employs breakbeats (something he's done before with success), setting them behind grand keyboard arrangements in such a way that lends depth and a herky-jerky momentum. Roughly 75 minutes long, the record takes a turn for the better around the halfway point when Kaito introduces some much-needed mystery via icy synth lines on the title track. The songs that follow flit between John Hughes-ian M83 instrumentals ("We Are Living Here") and more classically Kompakt minimal pieces ("It Happens Suddenly") but ultimately just seem too polite for their own good....full text |
| Dustedmagazine |
| t is an accident of both history and his label that Hiroshi Watanabe’s Kaito alias has come to be one of the most recognizable and critically accepted ambassadors for trance and deep house, two styles of electronic music long derided for vapid sameness and limited critical worth. There’s still some debate on how a Berklee education and nights out at Twilo or Save the Robots got him in the door at Kompakt, but Watanabe’s breathy New Age-influenced house didn’t just win over Cologne – 2002’s Special Life was a critical hit for turning expectations of the Kompakt label on its head, and the following year’s beatless companion Special Love aimed to, and succeeded in winning over the ambient crowd. Watanabe ushered in a wave of reform that had electroheads exploring new avenues of progressive house and reevaluating trance just as the musical climate at large was coming to be more favorable for electronic artists in general. He was in the right place at the right time. Hundred Million Light Years and its companion disc, Hundred Million Love Years, were less provocative. Watanabe was in a position to capitalize on the success of his first album by reimagining his own sound, but instead he took a conservative approach that didn’t do much with the sound of his keyboard-conquering epics three years earlier. By most accounts, Hundred Million Light Years was a refinement of previous material and nothing more. Though Kaito diehards loved it, armchair electro fans couldn’t see the value beyond the first handful of spins. “Everlasting” was great the first time. Why make “Natural Source”? Yet, here we are at album No. 3, eight years after his 12” debut, and Watanabe steadfastly refuses to let misty-eyed synth washes and muted breakbeats go after all these years. To wit, this is not an album for the cynically minded or hard of heart. It is an album full of resonant trance chords and sunny melodies and warm, enveloping, Vangelis-esque synthesizers that will seek to lift you up out of the claustrophobic confines of your headphones and into a world of fresh air and naïve happiness. The music is inspiring in the way that seeing a sunrise or capturing lightning bugs is inspiring – that is to say, it seeks the simplicity of appreciating a moment in the complexity of cosmic debris or bioluminescence. It bounces like recent M83, or Ulrich Schnauss, or Gui Boratto. This sort of childlike charm and whimsy seems appropriate when you consider he got the Kaito moniker from his son (whom he has also put on the cover of all of his releases, this one included). “The Breath of Spring,” “Rainbow Circles,” “Nothing Could Be More Peaceful” – these are some of the song titles. The name of the album is Trust. Maybe we’re meant to believe in his reliability as the avatar of trance for a generation that’s still trying to make out what exactly “blog-house” was....full text |
| Popmatters |
| Trust is more of the same from Kaito (born Hiroshi Watanabe). The third LP from Berklee College of Music graduate and one of the most well-liked Japanese purveyors of mild and agreeable trance is lush and rolling; its technicolor palette is built of clean synths and soaring string sections, and peaks are frequent. Of this year’s LP releases from the Kompakt camp (Gui Boratto, Matias Aguyao, Gus Gus, etc.), Trust is by far the least challenging I’ve heard. While it’s a likable album, the very singular, gentle nudge beneath Trust‘s glimmering surface helps move this material along in as predictably serene a fashion as it does on previous works. Since at least the late ‘90s, Kaito has been producing a light but deeply ambient blend of house and trance. I’m hesitant, as most people are, to use the “t” word because of the kind of overcooked, thumping three-chord monstrosities that dominate the dance CD section of Target, but there really isn’t a better word for it. Kaito’s work is too fluid and wrought with sentimental synth leads to land on any of the dollar-bin Ibiza Dance compilations, but his bountiful arrangements are undeniably trance-like in their movement, each motivated by percussion that really doesn’t change from track to track, and basslines that are diminished by the ample featherweight bliss at the center. Kaito’s Hundred Million Light Years, issued in 2006, is a significant improvement on his Kompakt debut LP Special Life, even if certain traditions remain firmly in place. The producer brands his releases with phrases or words that either communicate hippie-type free love stuff or just grandiosity in general (“Your Brilliant Flowers”, “The Universe”, “Everlasting”), and in perhaps an extension of this, he utilizes images of his son on nearly every record sleeve. For at least the first two full-lengths, Kompakt swapped the words “light” and “love” and issued beatless editions of the records, which likely made good with enthusiasts of the label’s Pop Ambient series (See PopMatters writer Tim O’Neill’s evaluation of Hundred Million Love Years here). Sonically, the distance between Special Life and Hundred Million Light Years is worth mentioning, as funky tracks like “Inside River” from the debut or cheesy piano tones like those on Special‘s “Scene” are nowhere to be found on Hundred Million, and although Trust is more relaxed than both of Wantanabe’s previous endeavors, little has changed....full text |
| Popmatters |
| Trust is more of the same from Kaito (born Hiroshi Watanabe). The third LP from Berklee College of Music graduate and one of the most well-liked Japanese purveyors of mild and agreeable trance is lush and rolling; its technicolor palette is built of clean synths and soaring string sections, and peaks are frequent. Of this year’s LP releases from the Kompakt camp (Gui Boratto, Matias Aguyao, Gus Gus, etc.), Trust is by far the least challenging I’ve heard. While it’s a likable album, the very singular, gentle nudge beneath Trust‘s glimmering surface helps move this material along in as predictably serene a fashion as it does on previous works. Since at least the late ‘90s, Kaito has been producing a light but deeply ambient blend of house and trance. I’m hesitant, as most people are, to use the “t” word because of the kind of overcooked, thumping three-chord monstrosities that dominate the dance CD section of Target, but there really isn’t a better word for it. Kaito’s work is too fluid and wrought with sentimental synth leads to land on any of the dollar-bin Ibiza Dance compilations, but his bountiful arrangements are undeniably trance-like in their movement, each motivated by percussion that really doesn’t change from track to track, and basslines that are diminished by the ample featherweight bliss at the center. Kaito’s Hundred Million Light Years, issued in 2006, is a significant improvement on his Kompakt debut LP Special Life, even if certain traditions remain firmly in place. The producer brands his releases with phrases or words that either communicate hippie-type free love stuff or just grandiosity in general (“Your Brilliant Flowers”, “The Universe”, “Everlasting”), and in perhaps an extension of this, he utilizes images of his son on nearly every record sleeve. For at least the first two full-lengths, Kompakt swapped the words “light” and “love” and issued beatless editions of the records, which likely made good with enthusiasts of the label’s Pop Ambient series (See PopMatters writer Tim O’Neill’s evaluation of Hundred Million Love Years here). Sonically, the distance between Special Life and Hundred Million Light Years is worth mentioning, as funky tracks like “Inside River” from the debut or cheesy piano tones like those on Special‘s “Scene” are nowhere to be found on Hundred Million, and although Trust is more relaxed than both of Wantanabe’s previous endeavors, little has changed....full text |
Kaito lyrics
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