album of the month
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The more one explores music, the more one discovers how open borders create the most interesting ideas and those living at the borderline have unique perspectives to share. Proof positive: Bebeto Alves’s forward-thinking “milonga” music. It’s his Danço Só – E Fico Assim Mais Oriental Me Invento Toda Manhã, created at the nexus of Argentina,…
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Sometimes, it feels like all it takes is a blink to miss something important. I say this because just weeks ago, on Dec. 30, in between major holidays, news trickled out of the untimely death of a Japanese enka giant. It was Aki Yashiro – that mainstay of all sake-loving drinkers – who succumbed to…
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Doesn’t it feel like sometimes all we need is a little push? When I hear Summer Lei’s debut, 我我是雷光夏 (I Am Lei Guangxia), I meditate on what we sometimes stand to lose simply by not taking that first step. Pastoral, experimental, and quite immediate, personal, and warm, rightfully, so much of what makes this music…
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We all make decisions on what we share with others. Sometimes what we hide might run the gamut of what we feel comfortable expressing. However, in the case of virtuoso violinist Ikuko Kawai’s #2, I can’t understand why this album or the particular moment it was created in, appears as a mere footnote (which it…
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It seems one of the ongoing mantras for this blog is: “Spring where your seeds grow roots.” A perfect example of this mantra in action is the early career of Indonesian R&B and diva, Mellyana Manuhutu. And the perfect entry into a unique slice of dangdut can be found in her kaleidoscopic album, Beatify.
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Do you know who I don’t envy? Pop stars. Out of all the careers or aspirations one can hold in the music business, none holds a candle to the sheer amount of stress, anxiety, work, and all-encompassing human problems that one will endure to simply make it as a pop artist. Rockers, jazz artists, and…
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As the year begins to draw to a close, my mind goes back to some of the people we lost this year. I’m thinking of artist’s artists like Alan Rankine, Pharoah Sanders, Tina Turner, and YMO greats (like the sorely missed Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yukihiro Takahashi). In this year full of great loss, at the…
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There’s nothing like youthful naivete is there? I fully believe it’s that ingrained spirit to want to shake things up and light your own path that forces the spirits of the past to look forward to the future. It’s that kind of spirit you hear positively soaring in the unclassifiable music of Koto-Za and their…
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Some of you might not realize it but It appears that lately I’ve been exploring a bit of musical nostalgia. For me, it’s that sweet spot in the mid ‘90s when the rise of a harder form of rap music sort of “disrupted” the whole music industry, causing it to further gentrify itself, compartmentalizing whole…
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I don’t know about you but for me certain albums are colored by memory. Whenever I put on Ricardo Fabini’s Cidade De Cristal it brings me back to a certain difficult time I had to go through. On those days where I felt a bit aimless, a bit withdrawn, all over the place – yet…
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