Astro Love is the first widely available solo release in several years from Kawabata, emerging from a period of relative quiet with this blockbuster Krautrock-flavored epic. On the whole, this a lovely and impressionistic record, the other side of Makoto's outrageous works with Acid Mothers' Temple. Taking cues from classics of the genre like Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra and Steve Hillage's Rainbow Dome Music, "Dos Nurages" is the centerpiece of the record, a 41-minute hypnotic epic, with echoplex’d guitar anchoring a stream of expertly done glissando. "Astro Love & Infinite Kisses" is a darker drone, in the traditions of Kawabata’s INUI series of releases for VHF. "Woman From Dream Island" finishes the record with a thick buzz of tamboura overlaid with trippy backwards guitar, before giving way to a gentle finger-picked acoustic coda.
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