TRACKLIST

1. Tantrika. . . . .9:28 2. Natasha . . . . .7:19 3. Desire. . . . . .7:19 4. Takshaka . . . .10:41 5. Soar Angelic . .14:08 6. Yakshini . . . .20:46 7. Ghost Echoes. . .7:23

Japan has received much attention last years in the realm of popular culture. With the almost back-to-back releases of Kill Bill Vol. I, The Last Samurai, and Lost In Translation, Hollywood at least seems to be taking notice of the exquisiteness of this Far East land. Why its music has been left behind is truly a mystery. The 70's electro-pop pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra was the East's much lauded answer to Kraftwerk. Other than Ryuichi Sakamoto - a founding member of YMO who contributed to, and no doubt, influenced Talvin's experimental OK - and much later, Ryukyu Underground, contemporary Japanese electronica has failed to receive its fair share of popular, and more importantly, critical acclaim. If you were to believe Dakini Records, Gio of Makyo is here to change precisely that.
While not Japanese by birth, Gio has been spinning, remixing and producing "shanti sonics and zen dub" in Tokyo for more than 10 years now. According to the label website, 'Dakini' is a rough translation for "space-goer/celestial woman/sky dancer", and indeed, the Makyo sound is very much preoccupied with the celestial and ethereal. While a number of artists can be described the same way - Delerium, for example - there is something that sets this music, and Yakshini in particular, apart from the rest. A well placed hi-hat here, a gentle sitar pluck there, followed by an soothing breakbeat. A perfectly pitched Natasha Atlas ("Natasha") to accompany all of the above and you have the makings of a truly hypnotic, otherworldly vibe. "Tantrika" is electro-tribal meditation, chanting and all. "Desire" and "Takshaka" venture into deep ambient territory without ever looking back while "Soar Angelic" - my favorite cut on the album - takes a tabla, some Indian strings, a piano, an enchanting vocal sample, adds a heavy dose of groove-ology and clocks in at just over 14 minutes. If we were lucky, this would surely be the soundtrack to dreams.
The only drawback of this album is the length of its tracks. With the first-mellow, then über-hyper title track droning on for almost 21 minutes, your attention starts to wane soon enough. Nonetheless, I regret having discovered this album a few years too late. This isn't trance. Well, not the kind you're used to anyway. Leave your mind altering chemicals at home. You won't need those with Yakshini. ~ by sreekanth

Some people will call this album "ethno-ambient", some will call it "dub", others will call it "Asian Underground" or "chill-out". But Makyo has moved beyond genres: you can hear the hypnotic bass of dub, the spacious drones of ambient, the pulsing percussion of India, the rippling synths of trance, and seductive Indo-Arab vocals, but the result is entirely new.
Two years of production have resulted in a rich, dense sound, designed to hold up to repeated listenings, with new layers emerging over time. While many electronic acts use sampling to simply dump any old sound over a 4/4 breakbeat, Makyo aims for an intricate, interwoven collage. Live instruments and vocals are fed into the sampler to be cut up, and arranged in radical new ways to create surreal soundscapes. The grooves of club music are present, but used for their hypnotic effects, and tied to rhythms played on warm Indian and Arab percussion. "Yakshini" is an album about dreams, formed from dreams, and evoking dreams in the listener.

SPOILER!

CODE Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008 EAC extraction logfile from 26. October 2008, 22:24 Makyo / Yakshini Used drive  : HL-DT-STRW/DVD GCC-4241N  Adapter: 1  ID: 0 Read mode              : Secure Utilize accurate stream : Yes Defeat audio cache      : Yes Make use of C2 pointers : No Read offset correction                      : 102 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              : User Defined Encoder Selected bitrate                : 768 kBit/s Quality                        : High Add ID3 tag                    : No Command line compressor        : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\wavpack.exe Additional command line options : -hmxd -w "GENRE=%m" -w "DATE=%y" -w "COMMENT=Released by a-one" %s %d TOC of the extracted CD     Track |  Start  |  Length  | Start sector | End sector     ---------------------------------------------------------         1  |  0:00.00 |  9:28.53 |        0    |    42652          2  |  9:28.53 |  7:19.07 |    42653    |    75584          3  | 16:47.60 |  7:19.35 |    75585    |  108544          4  | 24:07.20 | 10:41.73 |    108545    |  156692          5  | 34:49.18 | 14:08.02 |    156693    |  220294          6  | 48:57.20 | 20:46.24 |    220295    |  313768          7  | 69:43.44 |  7:23.35 |    313769    |  347028  Range status and errors Selected range     Filename C:\Rips\Makyo - Yakshini.wav     Peak level 97.7 %     Range quality 100.0 %     Test CRC 29A1F737     Copy CRC 29A1F737     Copy OK No errors occurred End of status report

SPOILER!

CODE REM GENRE "Ambient, Downtempo" REM DATE 2001 REM DISCID 5F121307 REM COMMENT "ExactAudioCopy v0.99pb4" PERFORMER "Makyo" TITLE "Yakshini" FILE "Makyo - Yakshini.wv" WAVE   TRACK 01 AUDIO     TITLE "Tantrika"     PERFORMER "Makyo"     INDEX 01 00:00:00   TRACK 02 AUDIO     TITLE "Natasha"     PERFORMER "Makyo"     INDEX 00 09:28:24     INDEX 01 09:28:53   TRACK 03 AUDIO     TITLE "Desire"     PERFORMER "Makyo"     INDEX 00 16:47:02     INDEX 01 16:47:60   TRACK 04 AUDIO     TITLE "Takshaka"     PERFORMER "Makyo"     INDEX 00 24:07:15     INDEX 01 24:07:20   TRACK 05 AUDIO     TITLE "Soar Angelic"     PERFORMER "Makyo"     INDEX 00 34:47:44     INDEX 01 34:49:18   TRACK 06 AUDIO     TITLE "Yakshini"     PERFORMER "Makyo"     INDEX 00 48:55:28     INDEX 01 48:57:20   TRACK 07 AUDIO     TITLE "Ghost Echoes"     PERFORMER "Makyo"     INDEX 00 69:41:51     INDEX 01 69:43:44