album of the month

  • Some of my favorite albums are those like the one I’ll be sharing today by Bergamo’s own iconic Ivan Cattaneo. Il Cuore É Nudo… E I Pesci Cantano (or The Heart Is Naked… And The Fish Sing) proves again that some of our best work is done when we stop putting in front all sorts…

  • For those that don’t believe we can there’s a way to engage with the outside world while stuck inside one’s inner space, Awa Muse‘s second compilation: しおのみち ニの巻 (Shio-No-Michi) Vol.2 proves there are other ways to meet it there.

  • Truth be told: I really had trouble deciding to share this album with you, fair reader. One of my many goals for this blog is to move away from the well-worn stereotype/trope of the “female musician”. However, staring right in front of me (and you now) is exactly what one associates  that being by pigheaded…

  • It’s perhaps uncommon knowledge that the best marriages (and relationships) are those comprised of two individuals coming together not in spite of their differences but because of their differences. One can clearly hear this in practice in the nearly telepathic playing of Osaka Japanese New Age guitar duo, Gontiti. In the past I’ve written a…

  • Don’t you just love it when everything comes together? Kenji Sawada must have taken forever to match up his forward-thinking persona with his stagecraft and music, but on Aux Femmes 女たちよ) it all fell into place. Toying with gender, electronics, and all sorts of compositional elements, Aux Femmes 女たちよ proved he just wasn’t some emptyheaded…

  • Was the world ever ready for Thomas Leer? Listening back to Thomas’s The Scale Of Ten one can hear all the potential there. It’s this theme of tweaking a recipe. Here it was to make his once abrasive, experimental blue-eyed soul into a chromed-out beast, outfitted in Fairlight CMI clothing, permeating with giant-sized hooks. In…

  • Put on your headphones. Put on and listen to this album. Spatial audio. Ambisonics. 3-D, virtual sound. There are many words to describe the technology Kohsei Morimoto’s Chaos Zone: Three Dimensional Sounds Created by Roland Sound Space System (カオス・ゾーン) or カオス・ゾーン (Chaos Zone) for short, tries to exploit a technological demo of sorts to promote…

  • There’s something I really admire about Naples’ own Teresa De Sio’s way of thinking. When I went around digging through interviews to find a little more about the backstory for 1988’s Sinderalla Suite, I encountered Teresa’s fuller story. In it, Teresa painted a much bigger picture than I was expecting.

  • The changing of decades always seem to introduce truly amazing albums that fall through the cracks. Be it because they are caught in between eras. Be it because they’re simply made outside of any prevailing trend. These albums, unfortunately, reveal their true brilliance (sometimes) only in hindsight. Recently, I’ve had that aha! moment with Clevedon…

  • Winter heat from an unlikely source. Perhaps I’m showing my bias as a violinist, but I have to share another of my favorite (sadly unknown) releases from my fellow brethren. Another wonderful cross-thatched affair of fourth world and new age grooves not from the west but this time from Japan’s other uber-talented, and quite prolific,…

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