I've got two Tomita records, Holst's The Planets and Live at Vienna. They're fucking great and if any of you IDM types are looking for some older synth stuff with the kind of humor many of us like, this is the shit.
He seems to me to be a bit of the Yanni or John Tesh of his day (70's early 80's), with a hefty hefty dose of pretentious bombast and lots of glam. There's this soft-focus picture of him walking out of a beam of light like in close encounters (which he actually plays on Live in Vienna!) wearing a tuxedo and mirrored shades. He's got a great sense of humor, and of course in the 70's there was no boundary between massive artistic pretentiousness and slapstick self-parody.
The stuff on Holst's the planets is great - he plays the melodies on synths, mixes in a music box playing the same melody (where's he find that) then mixes in this twisted, distorted vocal track which sounds like what Mission Control would hear if they sent up a pinhead astronaut "Muh! Buh! Tro! Ga! Do!". A lot of the record is cheesy early synth showmanship, but even when he's playing the stuff "straight" he has some kind of nutty, AFXesque flourish.
The Live at Vienna album is a hoot. He plays in this giant glass pyramid in the middle of a park with four *blimps* flying overhead pumping out the bass through massive airborne speakers! What a freako! He generally plays classical piano (chopin) and sci-fi hits.
-Chris Fahey
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From: Subconscious Geography [SMTP:artist@sub-con-geo.demon.co.uk]
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 1997 12:59 PM
To: idm@hyperreal.com
Subject: (idm) tomita
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