album

  • Ok, I’ll faint ignorance on this one but is it enough for me to pass up this opportunity? No. For all of my life, I’ve never stepped inside the realm of Swarovski. From a distance I’ve seen their impeccably lit stores, full of impossibly well lit, spotless floors, salespersons decked out in formal attire, and…

  • This might sound like yet that same old story: Noted folkloric or jazz muso discovers drum machines, synths, and samplers, proceeds to turn into both a sweeping statement unlike anything else in their oeuvre/pisses old fans off. I can play Madlibs with my write-up for Joan Bibiloni’s For A Future Smile and substitute Lisboa-native Júlio…

  • Disclaimer: you’re not going to hear any music on Jun Kawabata’s Mind Migration (Voyage To The Whale). What you’re hearing on this release is the kind of healing music little known on this side of the world. In the early ’90s CBS Sony created a record sublabel dubbed “Aqua Planet” combining three things: aquatic themed…

  • This is not entirely the way I wanted to introduce everyone to Akira Inoue but I can’t help myself and share Dolphin. It was September 1990, on one fateful night at the some cafe dubbed Heinecken Village in Harajuku, Tokyo that keyboardist extraordinaire Akira Inoue was joined by ex-members of Aragon, Parachute, and Kazumi Band…

  • I’ve stopped commenting about album covers but I really should pick that thread again. Just look at Andrew Annenberg’s glorious artwork for Steve Kindler and Teja Bell’s Dolphin Smiles. It’s rare that an album cover captures entirely the mood within an album, and wouldn’t you know it, it perfectly encapsulates what you’ll hear here. A…

  • This post might not make much sense in the future but today it’s a bite-sized review of Jonathan Goldman’s epic womb music dubbed: Dolphin Dreams. Originally released in 1988, on cassette, under the auspices of nascent American New Age label, Spirit Music, Dolphin Dreams provided a “sonic environment for relaxation, meditation, and the birthing process.”

  • As long as there is summer and people still want to hear/read about another Hajime Mizoguchi album, I’ll be more than happy to ride on that feeling. Continuing on a very long retrospective on Hajime’s work, see prior posts for his prior work, today we land on another of his wonderfully summer-esque albums — A…

  • I’m trying to parse out of Danny’s own bio what could help explain his Every Island. In his own bio, Danny Heines highlights his notable percussive, acoustic guitar fret-tapping technique and an ability to overtone throat sing as keen things he does. On Every Island, what’s notable is how more nuanced his skills are over…

  • Guest post by Giacomo Lee. The first thing that strikes you about Asian Wind is its sleeve. The striking pink and upside-down triangle on the front cover is the handiwork of design group Sign, a Japanese trio who were responsible for, among other things, the cover of Sakamoto’s Thousand Knives LP )back in the tail…

  • “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…

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