• Let’s unwind for a moment. When I haven’t been busy occupying my days with writing, my mind and body has literally been going to the beach to unwind. Somehow, I’ve lucked out and am living the coastal lifestyle (without actually living on any sea coast). While I would say it takes a change of mind…

  • How much are we a product of our past? It’s those thoughts that were floating through pianist Febian Reza Pane’s mind when he created Dreams Of Ganesha. From the first piano note you hear played to the last sustained note your hear ringing, instant memories of the deeply inward “jazz” music of Keith Jarrett start…

  • First, a huge thanks to Kyle for sharing this wonderful album with me. Too smooth for a Disco Tehran party he dj’ed, I can understand why he thought its sound might be appreciated elsewhere. From the first moment you put on Ziad Rahbani’s Houdou Nisbi (زياد الرحباني) you feel an instant pull that just floors…

  • The Long Living Things (Zoo Of The Sea)

    Masahiro Sugaya has always been an interesting composer. Based in Tokyo, it’s been his music that’s soundtracked dance theater group Pappa TARAHUMARA’s most known works. Masahiro’s music draws from a mix of minimal, ambient, world, and Japanese traditional styles. So, no one album or song can perfectly distill how varied (in mood and sound) each…

  • In a not-so-recent interview with Vice Italy, Lino Capra Vaccina laments that out of his recently reissued work we’re missing most of the picture of what he was trying to do. While Antico Adagio was one of these wonderful totems of Italian minimalism, it wasn’t until a decade, or so, later, in the mega rare…

  • The Green Chinese Table

    This one is a bit special. Last we heard from Seigen, he was introducing us to his very jazz-influenced take on Japanese New Age music. On the follow up to that epic debut, The Green Chinese Table, we find Seigen dividing his time up between recording sessions in Tokyo and New York City. It’s impossible…

  • Who knows what would have happened in France if New Yorker Valli Timbert hadn’t met filmmaker Philippe Bourgoin, at some Chelsea Hotel, in the late ‘70s? Philippe, not pictured on the cover of Chagrin D’Amour’s self-titled debut, was the French artiste who had fallen in love with rap early on in 1979. Then, via The…

  • Seems like the perfect time to sneak this one through ye olde FOND/SOUND blog. Led by Makoto Matsushita, proud creator of one of City Pop’s timeless gems (First Light), and Chris Mosdell, proud creator of this totally slept on “Japanese” techno-pop gem, comes this decidedly different collaboration called Paradigm Shift. Like its namesake, it actually does…

  • It would be easy to supplant whatever I stated in my post for Nuno Canavarro’s Plux Quba and simply transport it here. If we include Roberto Musci & Giovanni Venosta’s Water Messages On Desert Sand, as another trafficking in that gorgeous unplaceable thing — then we can think of it as another forgotten reimagining of…

  • “If you have taste, your long neck is an asset, your small stature is an asset, that crooked smile is an asset… Elegance is innate. It has nothing to do with being well dressed. Elegance is refusal.” – Diana Vreeland (ex-editor of Vogue/Bazaar magazine). It seems highly appropriate, and better stated, to use her words…

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