News: Yoshitaka Azuma - Moonlight of Asia is on CD from Columbia

This news comes courtesy of an anonymous reader, where we learned that the "Moonlight of Asia" album was reissued last April by Nippon Columbia. He sent us the Japanese info from the label's own website (see comment under entry), but I found corroborating evidence here.

I recently added this title via the CD-R revisit project, and didn't find this CD then when searching around.

Sadly, it appears Mr. Azuma passed away in 2012, according to the same comment.

Yoshitaka Azuma, Japan *** REISSUED ***

Yoshitaka Azuma - Moonlight of Asia. 1981 Nippon Columbia

***Reissued by Nippon Columbia, April 2013 ***

Moonlight of Asia is an early all-instrumental work by future video game composer Azuma. Somewhat similar to same period Kitaro, and a precursor to what Motoi Sakuraba would accomplish later in the decade. He has other albums from this period (Asian Wind, Far From Asia), which I'll guess to be in a similar vein. I was later advised that his other (3) albums are much more laid back and that Moonlight of Asia is the more progressive rock influenced of the bunch. Not to be overlooked is the fine analog synthesizer work - especially some of the fat Moog sequencer runs. A good one for fans of late 70s electronic music. Details for this artist in English are scarce.

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