Diego Olivas
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Rioting, looting, civil disobedience, and protest — nothing is born out nothing, all are born from a vacuum. When those we exploit say: “enough is enough” we need to stop and listen. If you think this story is something new, where were you the last 400 years? If you think the story is singular, you…
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How long ago was the Age Of Discovery? Six centuries ago, in 1418, the story of Portugal began under the leadership of Infante Dom Henrique, who through the captains João Gonçalves Zarco, Tristão Vaz Teixeira and Gonçalo Velho Cabral came on shore (either by necessity or choice) to the then unknown islands of Madeira and…
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Certain albums just sound special from the get-go. When I put on Ayuo Takahashi’s Nova Carmina instantly I hear something that takes me back. It’s something quite simple: Ayuo’s violin playing streaks of glissando over something he wrote for Aideen Morgan. It’s poetry speaks of a rebirth of sorts, of its narrator finding in the…
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Now, where did we leave off? Still holding on to bits of uncertainty, it seems. And like most of our far away islands, the most distant are the ones of our creation. Then, if all of that’s the case, in 1985, Björn seemed to be pretty much on his own trip. That’s where we pick…
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Some of my favorite artists are those that fluctuate along the same wavelength as yours truly. One of these is the incomparable Ayuo Takahashi. Never moored by any specific idea, his vision is expansive — all is fair game in his musical world. From English folk to mystic Persian devotionals, to electro and mutant funk,…
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What does one do when one can’t find answers themselves? You look for help. And so recently, one Coste Apetrea carved out some time out of his day to help yours truly try to get some semblance of history behind the late Björn Holm. For a long time I put aside writing about Björn, for…
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And now some jazz… up next on my ongoing quest to lose half my audience: Yoshio Ohtomo Quartet’s As A Child. I kid, of course. Classifying this under jazz is like classifying Dylan’s latest masterpiece “Murder Most Foul” as rock ‘n’ roll or the multi-layered yeoman tomes of the late John Prine as folk. It’s…
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Isn’t it wonderful when you can skip just whole bits of history and get to the pertinent parts? Such is the case with Franco Mussida’s Racconti Della Tenda Rossa (or Tales Of The Red Curtain), made by someone who most of you may already know as the founding member and lead guitarist (and sometimes vocalist)…
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Let’s take what we can from the late Toshiya Sukegawa’s Bioçic Music – Astrology. Another album in the little understood (or heard) environmental music genre, this album tries to add its own notch to a new totem other composers experimented with in Japan around this period. Graceful, meditative, and quite quiet it was meant to…
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Let’s revisit one of my favorite topics: when prog goes pop. In a way, it should inform today’s discussion on Anthony Phillips’ Invisible Men. You see, not so many moons ago I dedicated a mix to one Peter Bardens, ex-Camel and Caravan keyboardist who quietly created intriguing “prog”-minded pop music. It’s a sound that I…
ambient art pop art rock balearic brazilian electro-acoustic england environmental music experimental fourth world Funk fusion japan jazz minimalist mpb neo-folk neoclassical new age walearic