This is one of the many albums from transplanted American shakuhachi master John Kaizan Neptune which have been extremely popular in the Far East. Neptune was enchanted with the sound of the simple Japanese end-blown bamboo flute and studied it formally in both Hawaii and Japan - becoming a master teacher, performer and composer as well as developing improvements on the instrument’s design and building new instruments himself.

This album was released 26 years ago and quickly won a Japanese Best Recording of the Year award in 1980. The five tracks are a mixture of jazz, funk, and blues combined with Japanese folk music influences. The second and fourth tracks are the longest at over 12 minutes each and both feature some exquisite sounds on the various shakuhachi designs which Neptune created and plays. He has transformed not only the type of music one hears on the instrument but also its range, timbre and technical dexterities. Tracks 3 and 5 have somewhat dated passages that seem to conjure up Austin Powers soundtracks, along with brass writing that reminds one of Blood, Sweat & Tears. Well, part of the last track’s title is Fun and there’s no doubt it is fun listening.

I had four different John Kaizan Neptune CDs in my collection - one collaborating with East Indian musicians and another with three koto players (one koto is heard on the K2 disc). However, none of them exhibited the astounding transparency and sonic attractiveness of the special FIM K2 HD disc. (One CD even sounded more opaque and dull than the others; the note booklet touted it was the first to use "Mitsubishi’s 32-channel digital mixer." Uh, huh... That’s why it sounded like that.) - John Sunier

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008

EAC extraction logfile from 14. September 2009, 19:56

John Kaizan Neptune & The Arakawa Band / Bamboo

Used drive : HL-DT-STDVDRAM GH20NS10 Adapter: 2 ID: 1

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 667
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Installed external ASPI interface

Used output format : Internal WAV Routines
Sample format : 44.100 Hz; 16 Bit; Stereo


TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
---------------------------------------------------------
1 | 0:00.00 | 5:34.39 | 0 | 25088
2 | 5:34.39 | 12:26.21 | 25089 | 81059
3 | 18:00.60 | 3:58.20 | 81060 | 98929
4 | 21:59.05 | 12:14.17 | 98930 | 153996
5 | 34:13.22 | 4:49.40 | 153997 | 175711


Range status and errors

Selected range

Filename Z:\NetLab\John Kaizan Neptune & The Arakawa Band - Bamboo (1980) {LIM K2HD 030}\John Kaizan Neptune & The Arakawa Band - Bamboo.wav

Peak level 97.9 %
Range quality 100.0 %
Copy CRC FBB90BBE
Copy OK

No errors occurred


AccurateRip summary

Track 1 accurately ripped (confidence 3) [9931D4F4]
Track 2 accurately ripped (confidence 3) [72F62DEB]
Track 3 accurately ripped (confidence 3) [80F92951]
Track 4 accurately ripped (confidence 3) [1059FCFD]
Track 5 accurately ripped (confidence 3) [EC196F57]

All tracks accurately ripped

End of status report

REM GENRE Fusion
REM DATE 1980
REM DISCID 2C092605
REM COMMENT ExactAudioCopy v0.99pb4
PERFORMER "John Kaizan Neptune & The Arakawa Band"
TITLE "Bamboo"
FILE "John Kaizan Neptune & The Arakawa Band - Bamboo.wv" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Bamboo"
PERFORMER "John Kaizan Neptune & The Arakawa Band"
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "Blue Wind"
PERFORMER "John Kaizan Neptune & The Arakawa Band"
INDEX 00 05:26:64
INDEX 01 05:34:39
TRACK 03 AUDIO
TITLE "Walk Downtown"
PERFORMER "John Kaizan Neptune & The Arakawa Band"
INDEX 00 17:52:27
INDEX 01 18:00:60
TRACK 04 AUDIO
TITLE "Genji"
PERFORMER "John Kaizan Neptune & The Arakawa Band"
INDEX 00 21:58:73
INDEX 01 21:59:05
TRACK 05 AUDIO
TITLE "Fun Key (Ra Ra Ra)"
PERFORMER "John Kaizan Neptune & The Arakawa Band"
INDEX 00 34:09:70
INDEX 01 34:13:22