Diego Olivas
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Every time I revisit Eblen Macari’s landmark release, Música Para Planetarios, I find something different and special about it. At times, it’s finding pride that something like this exist where one’s own Mexican culture doesn’t need to be negated/subjugated to create something spectacularly pioneering. Other times, it’s when I sit back and identify cultural cues and traditions inherent in…
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Music For Silent Movies, it’s all there in the title. Koji Ueno, one half of Japanese duo Guernica (the other half being Jun Togawa from Yapoos), takes their subversive take on the era of “The Greatest Generation” to its logical evolution/conclusion by creating a soundtrack to the lesser known sounds of that period. Thoughts of musique concrete, serialism,…
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Sun-lit, rainbow music for respite after rainy days. That’s how I would describe Alap Jetzer’s largely acoustic renditions of Hindu guru Sri Chinmoy’s compositions. Attracted to the same devotional spiritual path that struck other musicians like Pete Townshend, Carlos Santana, Narada Michael Walden, and Roberta Flack, so was this young Swiss instrument maker and multi-instrumentalist…
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Everytime I put on Syoko’s Soil I have to do a double-take. Seriously? The music coming out of my headphones right now was made by the same person who created the My Neighbor Totoro soundtrack and Kichijoutennyo. Sonically, I can see the connection to the latter but stretching the conceit to his countless Miyazaki soundtracks seems to question his elasticity…
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New age records shouldn’t sound (or look!) as fun as German Büdi Siebert’s Hmm…, but I wager no one ever asked Büdi where his records should be classified. If I could compare him to anyone, it would most likely be Don Cherry, a similar artist who has no specific style but a magnificent taste in music. Straddling…
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It still boggles my mind that Quiet! was in fact crafted by the same artist who sang in the proto-Asian Underground hit “Ever So Lonely“. A severe departure from the proto-Asian Underground Pop she’s known for, Quiet! showed Sheila Chandra working untethered, trying to go beyond the Orientalism of her past work and push it forward in directions that weren’t entirely…
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Just look at that album cover. Mio Fou’s self-titled debut has an album cover that has fascinated me to no end. You see, the utterly sublime music found in Mio Fou must have some connection to this image. For months I struggled to define what time of the year this picture was taken and what time of…
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What a lovely hour of music. What’s else is there to say about Ric Kaestner’s criminally unknown Music For Massage? “an hour of soothing music designed for massage therapy” is what the cassette cover states on the Japanese-influenced woodblock album artwork, for once who am I to disagree? Made up of two cassette sides – one a-side devoted…
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Originally recorded to soundtrack Rentarō Mikuni’s Jury Prize-winning Cannes film festival “Shinran: Path to Purity”, Yas Kaz’s own Shinran/Path To Purity does well to exist on its own, outside the cinema. Taking cues from the original story of Shinran, the Buddhist monk who promoted a very egalitarian method to spirituality/salvation, so does Yas Kaz transform his knowledge of Japanese…
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Deep, deep, earth music from Tsutomu Ōhashi and the Geinoh Yamashirogumi crew. A macrosymphony composed for the International Garden and Greenery Exposition in Osaka, Japan, 1990, Ecophony Gaia, was supposed to be the stunning, aural centerpiece for a light and water performance system echoing the sentiment of the venue: “Harmonious Coexistence of Nature and Mankind.”
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