Geinoh Yamashirogumi

芸能山城組 (Geinoh Yamashirogumi) is a Japanese musical collective founded on January 19, 1974 by Shoji Yamashiro, consisting of hundreds of people from all walks of life: journalists, doctors, engineers, students, businessmen, etc. The array of talents and ideas available brings a peerless degree of creativity to their work, which is known for skillful fusion of traditional music with high technology. Their early albums were marked by a distinct world influence, with works such as Chi no Hibiki (Echoes of the Earth Sing East Europe) displaying Bulgarian and other eastern European singing styles and Africa Genjoh (The African Vision Singing) featuring African stylised chanting. Osore-zan - Dounokenbai, furthermore, offered a more psychedelic flavor with Krautrock influences and the introduction of guitar work.

Their breakthrough however came in the 1980s. MIDI digital synthesizers could not handle the tuning systems of traditional gamelan music, so the group had to start from scratch, teaching themselves how to program in order to modify their equipment. The album that followed, Ecophony Rinne (1986) was a new direction for the group, the first time they incorporated computer generated sounds into their work. It also marked the start of what’s now known as the “trilogy”. The success of this album brought them to the attention of Katsuhiro Otomo, who commissioned them to create what would become their most well-known work, the soundtrack of Akira. Ecophony Gaia, released in 1990, is the third album of the “trilogy” - Ecophony Rinne (1986) and AKIRA (1990) make up the respective first and second albums in the trilogy - and like Akira before it revels in experimentation, with traditional musical styles and modern instrumentation and synthesizers being used to create a wonderful fusion of styles that become almost impossible to clearly categorize.

Geinoh Yamashirogumi has faithfully and accurately reproduced over eighty different styles of traditional music and performances from around the world, but despite having performed internationally to a high degree of critical acclaim they remain relatively unknown.

(source: wikipedia)