• Let’s take what we can from the late Toshiya Sukegawa’s Bioçic Music – Astrology. Another album in the little understood (or heard) environmental music genre, this album tries to add its own notch to a new totem other composers experimented with in Japan around this period. Graceful, meditative, and quite quiet it was meant to…

  • Let’s revisit one of my favorite topics: when prog goes pop. In a way, it should inform today’s discussion on Anthony Phillips’ Invisible Men. You see, not so many moons ago I dedicated a mix to one Peter Bardens, ex-Camel and Caravan keyboardist who quietly created intriguing “prog”-minded pop music. It’s a sound that I…

  • Sometimes, I feel like I may lead you even further down rabbit holes I’ve fallen into. Case in point: Dream Dolphin’s Atmospheric Healing. Released in 1996, on Harry Hosono’s FOA Records label, Atmospheric Healing began to stretch the label’s original concept of releasing “folk-oriented art” music into something they’d dub the “force of ambient”. Impossible…

  • Pardon me a bit today, for there is a whole lot to unpack behind this work Flesh & Bone’s Skeleton Woman. So, I’ll have to parse things out just a bit. First, I’ll classify this release under the “fourth world” banner but still feel that’s not quite doing justice to it. Part jazz, part ambient,…

  • Next, in my continuing series of the redemptive power of house music, I take a look at EPO’s Fire & Snow. I’m half-joking, of course. However, EPO’s Fire & Snow is one of those hidden full album burners that sounds like an anomaly in someone’s discography but has that sound made for them. We had…

  • 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…

  • Truth be told, I always had a “spiritual” theme in mind for this month’s mix for LYL Radio. Back when it was a germ of a thought, entitled “Milarepa” (inspired by the redemption story of Milarepa from Buddhist religious canon), I had a different blend touching on the personal way we redeem/renew ourselves during this…

  • 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.

  • With all that’s going on in our world, I thought it would be important to share something that both reminds us of the healing power of music and of a country that is desperately suffering through its crisis. Originally created for Italy’s intriguing healing music label, Ludi Sounds, Raffaelle Serra’s Musiche Per Il Cuore E…

  • FAD: FAD! (1981)

    First things first: Please go to Noka’s Youtube channel and hit “subscribe” to thank them for sharing this first. None other than sharing other fascinating nuggets of Japanese indie rock, punk, and techno, he made me make a snap decision. In light of all that’s going around us, rather than share another bit of (perhaps)…

ambient art pop art rock balearic brazilian electro-acoustic england environmental music experimental folk-rock fourth world Funk fusion japan jazz minimalist neo-folk neoclassical new age walearic