Digital Bach stands as one of Takashi Kokubo’s seminal early works, a conceptual album that attempts a reconstruction of Bach’s musical ethos within the emerging digital era. Released in the 1980s, during Japan’s dramatic transition from analog to digital technology, the album fuses the structural aesthetics of Baroque composition with precisely rendered synthesizer soundscapes. The result is a sonic dialogue between the apparent coldness of technology and the warmth of human perception, revealing a subtle “harmony” between the two.

Kokubo’s deep grounding in music theory and his pursuit of spatial resonance crystallize here into a sound world where the classical and the futuristic coexist. Underlying the album is a conviction that—even with the arrival of digital tools—the human faculty of listening remains central and irreplaceable.

Digital Bach endures as a pioneering proof that electronic music can possess emotion, depth, and soul—still glowing with freshness decades after its creation.

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1.Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

2.The Musical Offering, No. 2: Perpetual Canon (Canon Perpetuus)

3.The Musical Offering, No. 7: Canon à 4 (Four-Part Canon)

4.Air on the G String

5.Fantasia in G major

6.The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I: Prelude No. 1 in C major

7.The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I: Fugue No. 4 in C-sharp minor (Five Voices)

8.The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080