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 |
Sound Samples (http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:g9fpxq9gldde 
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