CCMusic.com

Nature, the cosmos and humanity are the inspirations for Joji Hirota's latest solo album, Prayer's Tale. Single-handedly playing 40 different Japanese and Asian instruments, combined with vocals, he weaves sounds of nature, emotions and colors of the universe into a beautiful soundscape. With Joji's circular instrument set up (various taiko drums, 13 different sizes of kin [prayer bells], six sizes of gongs, various bells and wind chimes) he can stand in the center and respond intuitively. "Everybody has their own personal circumstances... their own sense of 'universe'. Here, I try to express my own personal sense of Earth's history, human history, and my own outlook on the future through musical scenes, emotions, colors and nuances of sound." (Joji Hirota)