Diego Olivas
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I think that just about does it. If you had on your bingo card Toshiyuki Honda to complete the Japanese “saxophonist goes Avant Pop” game, you’re the winner now! Joining the likes of Yasuaki Shimizu, Genji Sawai, and Hiroyasu Yaguchi, comes Toshiyuki’s Saxophone Music, another album redefining what is exactly that: music played by saxophonists.…
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Is it alright it if I take it easy on this one? I doubt Rob Mounsey would have wanted us to over analyze his Dig. Functioning at my preferred meeting of fun, inventive, and memorable art, Dig is the increasingly rare album that is all of that while remaining distinctive enough to warrant further exploration…
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A leftfield reimagining of vaunted Afro-Cuban jazz classics, in a new school “futuristic” Japanese Pop style, shouldn’t sound so interesting as it does in Today’s Latin Project. Launched on the demise of one famous group (The Tokyo Cuban Boys) and the rise of one important, new musical voice, Yasuaki Shimizu, you’d expect something titled Today’s…
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Somehow, I’m stumbling on a theme. This is the second start of the week where I share the utterly brilliant work of another ethnomusicologist. In today’s case, it’s for good reason, I have to share what I consider is one of the Balearic masterpieces — Riccardo Giagni’s Kaunis Maa. Perfect for summer, Kaunis Maa is…
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“Inspired ethnological musical exploration from an unlikely source.” — what better way to describe Michael Atherton’s Windshift? Michael Atherton might best be known in Australia as one of it’s leading scholars and practitioners of Aboriginal and Pan-Pacific music but somewhere in his history lies a fantastic composer/musician who understood a fourth way to bridge all…
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Cover Photography by @krstnshtlv As a writer, one always has floating on one’s head drafts of things to cover. For various years I’ve always wanted to really tell the story of the music of Brazil’s Minas Gerais region, post-Clube Da Esquina. That’s part of the reason I chose to focus intently on it for my…
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My apologies to my less than trusty Google Translation app, but there are only a few things I can describe as legibly belonging in the shared space of Yuki Nakayamate’s Octopussy. Names like Roxy Music, Matia Bazar, August Darnell (as part of Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band and Kid Creole and the Coconuts), and Grace…
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If one can remember anything of French-Lebanese musician Gabriel Yacoub, it’s of the time he fronted progressive folk group Malicorne. Under Malicorne, one could hear ideas fomented from prior work with the Alan Stivell band. A mix of forgotten Breton music and experimental folk, Malicorne sounded like little else (closest brethren being Clannad, elsewhere). As…
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Coming in clear, not just a message from Min’yō but one of other beautiful Japanese folk traditions from the Muromachi period and others from deep sōkyoku compositions, albeit transformed via newfound ideas (of newer ages), as played through by the late great clarinetist Koichi Inamoto. To put it simply: Well, what’s the Message From Min-Yō…
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Here’s another leftfield one from the Windham Hill label. A high mixture of Latin American rhythms, warm digital synthesis, and exploratory brass instruments, High Plateaux by the Argentine-Mexican duo of Bernardo Rubaja and Cesar Hernandez, cement itself as one of the high points and sadly little, further defined areas of little-known Latin American New Age…
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