Osamu Kitajima
Osamu Kitajima | |
|---|---|
| Background information | |
| Years active | 1971 |
Biography
Justin Heathcliff was the pseudonym of Japanese producer/musician Dr. Osamu Kitajima. Osamu was already a successful composer of TV and advertising jingles, when a move to the UK in 1971 brought him in to contact with British folk and psychedelic rock. Inspired in particular by The Beatles, Tyrannousaurus Rex and Syd Barrett), he dubbed himself "Justin Heathcliff" (picked for it's English-sounding quality) and issued his lone eponymous album. Released only in Japan, the album became highly prized in collector's circles for it's good-natured idiosyncracy and casual melodicism. Justin Heathcliff began to receive wider interest in the West when the track "You Know What I Mean" was featured on the Asian volume of the Love, Peace, and Poetry compilation series in 1999, and has since been reissued on CD. Osamu thereafter dropped the moniker, and has continued to work under his own name. Now associated more closely with New Age music than pop, he currently resides and works in Los Angeles.