Ki-Oku
Ki-Oku is a collaborative studio album by Japanese jazz trumpeter Toshinori Kondo and Japanese hip hop producer DJ Krush. It was released on August 8, 1996 in Japan by Sony Music Entertainment. The album was issued in Europe by the R&S Records imprint Apollo on January 26, 1998, and in the United States by Instinct Records on March 23, 1999.
Composition
Ki-Oku consists of 10 proper tracks and three short interludes. It features a cover of "Sun Is Shining", which was originally written and performed by Bob Marley.Critical reception
Rick Anderson of AllMusic said that Ki-Oku is primarily an album of "smooth-groove jazz" music, but "reveals more with repeated listens; if it sounds too easy at first, listen again – there's lots of interesting stuff going on beneath what sometimes sounds like a merely pleasant surface." In 2015, Fact placed Ki-Oku at number 25 on its list of the best trip hop albums of all time.Personnel
Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.Musicians
- Toshinori Kondo – acoustic trumpet, electric trumpet, arrangement
- DJ Krush – beats, programming, scratching, arrangement
- Toshinori Kondo – production
- DJ Krush – production
- Noriko Asano – executive production
- Shuichi Ikebuchi – mixing (recorded music)|mixing], recording and reproduction|recording]
- Masahito Kitayama – executive production
- Koichi "Oppenheimer" Matsuki – mixing on "Sun Is Shining"
- Yuki Noda – executive production
- Masayo Takise – mastering
- Naohiko Yamada – associate production
- Mikio Hasui – photography
- Miki Terada – art direction, design
- Masakazu Yamamoto – art direction, design
- Shigeru Yamaoka – art direction, design