''Virtual Rabbit'' is

Susumu Hirasawa is a Japanese musician and composer. In the fifth year of elementary school, Hirasawa took up the electric guitar, inspired by the surf and instrumental rock bands he heard on the radio and on TV, later joining his junior high school's band. ...

's third solo album.

Overview

''Virtual Rabbit'' was made in the same style as the previous two albums, although greater in scale, with compositions more in line with Hirasawa's later solo work, and with a larger focus on orchestral styled instrumentation. It explores reality, religion, science, and dreams. With this album, Hirasawa continued to streamline his production methods, reducing the use of guest musicians in the album almost completely to choral backing. This was the first Hirasawa album to be engineered by Masanori Chinzei, who has since worked as

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

on all of Hirasawa's music.

Track listing

Personnel

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or witho ...

, classical guitar,

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gu ...

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis ...

s, drum machine, sampler, sequencer, programming, acoustic

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a musica ...

(3), toy accordion (4), Amiga 2500 ("Say" program -

Narration Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the ...

(5)),

autoharp An autoharp or chord zither is a string instrument belonging to the zither family. It uses a series of bars individually configured to mute all strings other than those needed for the intended chord. The term ''autoharp'' was once a trademark o ...

(7), production ;additional musicians * -

backing vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are u ...

(2) *Teru Uchida Strings - strings (2) *Toshihiko "BOB" Takahashi (courtesy of

Alfa Records , originally a publisher known as Alfa Music Ltd. and later succeeded by record company Alfa Music Inc., was established in 1969 by composer and record producer Kunihiko Murai. It was formed into an independent record label known as Alfa Record ...

) -

fretless A fretless guitar is a guitar with a fingerboard without frets, typically a standard instrument that has had the frets removed, though some custom-built and commercial fretless guitars are occasionally made. The classic fretless guitar was firs ...

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range: ** Bass (instrument), including: ** Acoustic bass gu ...

(3, 9), backing vocals (5-6) *Yasuchika Fujii and Kazuhiko Fujii (courtesy of Alfa Records) - backing vocals (5-6) *Mamoru Kikuchi (credited as "WONDER WHO?") - narration/Old Man's voice (5) *

Jun Togawa is a Japanese singer, musician and actress. Her close friends over the years include Susumu Hirasawa. Career After gaining attention a guest singer for the New Wave band Halmens and her acting roles in Japanese dramas and commercials for the ...

(courtesy of Tōshiba EMI) - vocals (6) ;technical *Masanori Chinzei () -

recording A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, r ...

mixing engineer A mixing engineer (or simply mix engineer) is responsible for combining ("mixing") different sonic elements of an auditory piece into a complete rendition (also known as "final mix" or "mixdown"), whether in music, film, or any other content of a ...

, backing vocals (4-6) *Masaru Arai, Koreyuki Tanaka, Meiji Takamatsu, Shinji Kobayashi (Mix); Masanori Ihara, Tetsuto Kato (Gold Rush); Hideaki Tamura (Eggs); Yu Ishizaki, Motohiro Yamada (Music Inn) - second engineers *Reiko Miyoshi (Tokyu Fun) -

mastering engineer A mastering engineer is a person skilled in the practice of taking audio (typically musical content) that has been previously mixed in either the analog or digital domain as mono, stereo, or multichannel formats and preparing it for use in dist ...

;visuals *Kiyoshi Inagaki (Asset) - art director *Hideki Namai -

photography Photography is the visual art, art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It i ...

*Kazunori Yoshida - hair & make-up *Akemi Tsujitani - styling ;operations *I₃ Promotion **Yūichi Kenjo - production, backing vocals (4-6) **Hiroki Yamaguchi -

artist management A talent manager (also known as an artist manager, band manager or music manager) is an individual who guides the professional career of artists in the entertainment industry. The responsibility of the talent manager is to oversee the day-to-day ...

, backing vocals (4-6) **Masami Fujii, Takeshi Fujita, Tsutomu Fukushima - artist management **Hiroyshi Mitomi, Shoko Mashio - publicity coordination * Polydor K.K. **Kazuyoshi Aoki - A&R coordination **Osamu Takeuchi - director, backing vocals (4-6) ;Thanks *AC Unit, Ouija Ltd.

Release history

*"Bandeira Travellers" is included on the ''Detonator Orgun Music Special'' sampler disc. *"Bandeira Travellers hysical Navigation Version and "Clear Mountain Top" are included, respectively, on the '' Detonator Orgun 1'' and ''2'' soundtrack albums. *"Stormy Sea", "Bandeira Travellers", "Virtual Rabbit" and "Clear Mountain Top" are included on the ''Root of Spirit～ESSENCE OF HIRASAWA SOLO WORKS～'' compilation. *"Stormy Sea", "Bandeira Travellers hysical Navigation Version, "Virtual Rabbit" and "Clear Mountain Top" are included on the ''

Archetype The concept of an archetype (; ) appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, and literary analysis. An archetype can be any of the following: # a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main model that ...

, 1989-1995 Polydor years of Hirasawa'' compilation.

References

External links

*
Virtual Rabbit
at iTunes Japan
Virtual Rabbit
at amazon.co.jp {{DEFAULTSORT:Virtual Rabbit Susumu Hirasawa albums Japanese-language albums 1991 albums Polydor Records albums