KUNIYUKI TAKAHASHI Vinilo y CD

Review: Second time around for Kuniyuki Takahashi's 2009 album "Walking In The Naked City", a fine fusion of future jazz and luscious deep house that was previously only available on CD. It's great that the set has finally dropped on wax, because the album remains one of the experienced Japanese producer's most impressive works. Laden with atmospheric field recordings, drowsy chords, smooth grooves and layered African and South American style percussion, the set contains a swathe of Kuniyuki claassics including "Night Forest", the jazz-funk influenced, flute-heavy brilliance of "Come With Us", the organ-laden vocal bliss of "Storm (Instrumental)", the Kyoto Jazz Massive-esque "First Experience" and the piano ambient wonder that is "Life Story". In a word: essential.

Review: Before delivering the self-explanatory Newwave Project album in 2017, Kuniyuki Takahashi had spent well over a decade delivering spiritual, life-affirming blends of deep house and future jazz. It's this side of his output that shines through on Remix Works, a collection of some of the producer's most sublime reworks of other people's work. Typically atmospheric, musically detailed and emotion-seeped, the set contains numerous headline-grabbing highlights, including a fluid, acid-flecked Latin deep house version of 'Plateau' by Mouse on the Keys, a sparkling and futuristic Afro-house re-wire of Mr Raoul K's extra-percussive 'Dounougnan Magni', a marimba-sporting drift through deep aural rainforests (his sublime revision of Kazumi Watanabe's 'Garuda') and a loved-up, life-affirming re-imaging of Jungle By Night's horn-sporting 'Love Boat'.