Sacred Journey of Kukai
In the face of the many tragedies of September 11, 2001, the tribulations of Kitaro don't amount to much--he got grounded in Hawaii for a few days while en route to Japan. But the unscheduled layover did give the Japanese musician a chance to ponder the state of the world and his music in it, and the results are one of his best CDs in years.  Inspired by those events, Kitaro began making a pilgrimage to the island of Shikoku which has 88 temples, each with its own distinct temple bells. Kitaro has recorded those bells on his as-yet-uncompleted trek and works them into the fabric ofThe Sacred Journey of Ku-Kai, the first of a projected multi-CD series. Kitaro creates landscapes as meditative as any he's conceived and with more open space to allow his flutes, electric sitars, Chinese huquin (violin), pipa, and of course synthesizers to breathe. Although Kitaro occasionally hits the bombastic cadences and hyper-glycerin melodies that often mar his work, he taps into a more refined spirit on tracks like "Michi" with its Zen garden flow and the ritual space of "Gi," featuring Tibetan flutist and singer Nawang Khechog. --John Diliberto