interview
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I have to admit: one of my deep regrets from my recent trip to Japan was missing out on visiting the storefront of today’s guest, Yohei Kunitomo. It was somewhere in Tokyo’s Shimokitazawa neighborhood that I lost track of time and lost my opportunity to visit Pianola Records – to really get a feel of…
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Is it wrong to feel nostalgia for a past you never lived through? With the rise of City Pop and other genres or media evoking some sort of hauntology, I keep trying to purposefully separate myself from being too backwards-looking, for fear of running the risk of falling through a kitsch trap many fall in.…
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Looking back, it feels like my relationship with Endy goes back more than recently. Trolling through my Discogs orders I see that my oldest purchase from the man behind Groove Bunny Records was in 2017 – a copy of Mich Live’s Message From Heart which y’all finally got a chance to listen to in 2019.…
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It’s not entirely lost on me how improbable this conversation is. I say this because nearly half a decade ago, in 2018, when I originally wrote about, Ken-ichiro Isoda, the person I’m speaking to today, I never realistically thought he’d be the one to bring me back, full-circle, on the heel’s of SRRD’s reissue of…
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Isn’t it always those late night thoughts that can push you to do something meaningful during your daylight hours? I say this because lately I’ve been ruminating on something: if ever this blog runs this course, I’d hate myself if I never took the time to document in some way those that had some way…
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It bears repeating, well, at least serve as a reminder to myself, that: music lives best outside any kind of gatekeeping. When we’re blessed to discover music that moves us, doesn’t that blessing feel even more profound when we discover that others can partake in its existence with us? It’s what’s leading me to explore…
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Spell-binding. I hate to use that term but what else can you use to describe Nachiko Tateoka’s 1980 debut, 1st – 薬屋の娘 (or The Daughter of a Pharmacist)? An engrossing, hypnotic, melange of vanguard Japanese pop music treating you to ideas gleaned from spiritual jazz, homegrown folk, psychedelia, and next-gen avant prog, seemed the unlikeliest…
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Love is such an unexplainable thing, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s coming straight at you. Other times, it comes from a different angle, unexpected and only makes its case steadily — from a distance. How else, can I explain my love for the work of Sophie and Peter Johnston and their own stab at creating their…
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Yumiko Morioka’s work under the “Synagetic Voice Orchestra” and her Mios wouldn’t have appeared to me if it wasn’t by happenstance and luck. You see, for a moment in time, Spencer Doran had sent me a message about some wonderful work by one Alessandro Ravi or Raul Lovisoni (turned out it was Mr. Ravi) that…
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Talk about being in the right place and at the right time. Normally, I’m not blessed with great timing but I consider myself fortunate to reach Randy Honea when he had his last copy of Still Life. Now sitting in front of me, in real life, was this, his album — a heady, moving mix…
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