Last month, the music world lost a genius you’ve most likely never heard of, Osamu Shoji. He was 85 years old.

Osamu Shoji was born in 1932, and he started out as a songwriter for Japanese pop artists in the late-60s, but his solo career didn’t take off in any substantial way until the late-70s, when he embraced the then relatively-new world of synthesizers and sequencers. In 1978, he released two albums of original synthesizer music: Welcome To The SF World, and Jataka, two absolutely wonderful records that feature ambient, new age and experimental tracks that showcase everything a synthesizer could accomplish in the late 70s.  Continue reading →