There isn't an awful lot of information about Saito Koji to be shared, the Japanese born ambient artist has been releasing albums through labels such as Magic Book Records and Kesh Recordings for quite some time now and has made a name for himself for pumping out quality releases for the genre.
Beautiful was hatched in early 2009, and is perhaps one of the most overlooked releases of the year. There are perhaps a couple of reasons for this, one would be that ambient is a notoriously difficult genre to break into popular consciousness with (unless a website like Pitchfork discovers it and gives it a high rating of course), and the other would be that it is a 43:24 second long track that is the same endless one minute or so loop over and over.
Now, most could chalk this down to sheer laziness. Here it is not so. Saito Koji's
Beautiful sits at a perfectly comfortably length, because once you immerse yourself in it you don't really want to leave, not for a while anyway. This precious loop is more suited for background music but still interesting enough to capture attention whilst listening attentively, and it really is not a good idea to rush it. It's dreamy, ethereal synth pattern and the simple hammering of keys is atmospheric simplicity at its finest.
Beautiful brings one thought to mind: if only Saito Koji was around to score Kubrick's
2001: A Space Odyssey back in the day. The sense of awe of watching that film for the first time reminds me very strongly of what feelings
Beautiful provokes in me. It is indeed, beautiful.
