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I hate the old saying, “they don’t make them like they used to.” However, in the case of Atsuko Okuno – better known as Iria – you could argue that she has always made herself into exactly what she wanted to be. From pioneering Japanese girl punk rocker to her wonderful left-field turn as a…
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Sometimes, it’s the combined power of simpatico ideas that yields the biggest payoff. I remind myself of this whenever I listen to the wonderfully sunny, “summery” music of Carole Serrat. Made in Japan but born in France, Carole’s OSE serves as a perfect gateway into a little-known bit of musical symbiosis.
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Once again, we’re back at the shoreline or more like: I can’t seem to leave the water’s edge. As summer continues to wind down, I keep going back to explore my kind of deep easy listening: “resort music.” My mind and ears keep heading down to the early works of Moonriders’s Masahiro Takekawa and his…
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With nearly everyone transitioning into late summer, my mind (and ears) lately come back to Yoko Kanno’s music. It’s not Yoko’s out-there jazz for Cowboy Bebop nor her cyberdelic contemporary work on anime like Macross Plus. No, it’s Yoko Kanno’s little-heralded, windswept, breezy, Balearic soundtracks for Koei’s 大航海時代 (aka Uncharted Waters) video game series.
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Who says I don’t like a good mystery? I say this because it appears that lately I’ve been hitting on this theme: unsolved mysteries. Once again, I’m caught torn between sharing some work that absolutely pushes all my right buttons and not sharing it because: all stones left turned reveal nothing about who made it.…
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You know, sometimes you’ve gotta go with what you’ve got. It was over three years ago when I first discovered Blue (ブルー・碧い海のイマージュ) by Blue on yaoiboi92’s YouTube channel (whom you really should subscribe to if you haven’t done so). I was immediately taken by this album’s meditative blend of aquatic ambient music and organic, almost…
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If there’s one thing that I find worthwhile about sharing music with y’all, it’s that it forces me to push myself to stick my neck out. It moves me to dig a little deeper and get a fuller picture for y’all to experience. And in today’s case, it puts me in a position to do…
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Let’s do something different today. Let’s let the music speak for itself. I say this because I’m still inspired and surprised by who tunes in to what this blog has to say. And one of its surprising readers is one, Agata Melnikova, aka Sign Libra, who discovered this blog many moons ago after listening to…
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How does one describe Ken Muramatsu’s music? If I can compare it to anything, it’s to enjoying an apéritif on a hot summer day. Filed under the “ambient”, “jazz”, or “New Age” banner, it’s his music that never completely traffics in any of those spaces. It’s deeper, much easier, listening. Like a good Alvarinho or…
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When I think of summer, when I think of the vibrancy of this season, I think of albums like the Ten Plants series, spearheaded by video game composers Nobuo Uematsu and Toshiyuki Sasagawa.
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