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A personal favorite of mine, not because it’s his greatest work — I’d wager more people expect the late, great Swedish guitar maestro Thomas Almqvist’s Balearic masterpiece Nyanser to be that one — but because it’s the one that sounds the most honest to where I come from. Thomas Almqvist’s The Journey was his second…
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I was going to write about how much I appreciate all of you, the readers, who keep visiting this blog and give your precious time to discover music I feel passionate about. It’s been over a year since FOND/SOUND began. It’s because of your encouragement and support that this labor of love keeps going. With…
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Proof positive that maybe the Germans were on to something. In 1979, the independent German music critics’ association bestowed upon Santiago’s Walking the Voodoo Nights their highest honor, the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis. For album of the year — knee deep in the time of punk and post-punk — one wouldn’t think that such a high honor…
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There’s something about fall that makes me play Hiroshi Yoshimura’s music much more often. On prior albums like Green, A・I・R (Air In Resort), and Soundscape 1: Surround, Hiroshi perfectly seized on exactly what “environmental music” could be and how it could differ from BGM (background music). No longer mere ambient music, it was decidedly rich, melodic experimentation…
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These are the kind of stories that make me smile. Truth be told, there is desperately little story out there to tell of Takami Hasegawa’s sole release L’Ecume Des Jours (a nod to Boris Vian’s novel Froth on the Daydream…). Singer-songwriter Takami Hasegawa from Fukushima decides to release an album of Gallic-style, Les Disques du…
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Maybe Harry Hosuono was onto something? Mishio Ogawa, the “Trance” part of the Love, Peace, & Trance equation…and also ex-lead singer for Japanese experimental New Wave act Chakra…seemed like an odd choice to be one of the three vocalists for his eclectic and forward-thinking quasi-ambient techno group of the same name. However, judging by the…
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I’m still floored that such an album like Pictures exists and that it exists in such an arrested state of discovery. In 1983, Andy Stennett and John Rocca, of influential British electro-funk group Freeez, decide to hide away from their record label and sure chart-topping success (courtesy of their infamous/ubiquitous hits, “Southern Freeez” and “IOU”)…
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Periodically, I like to dive into my old “A Track, A Day” blog archives for music I’ve written about before but I feel still hasn’t gotten its fair shake. What better time than Halloween to revisit Tuca’s (real name Valeniza Zagni da Silva) curious masterpiece: Dracula, I Love You? Curious because it’s unlike much released at…
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One of the ultimate statements in sleaze. Some Discog commenter put it better than I ever would: “If cocaine were music, this album would be the result.” Helmed by German post-disco mastermind Zeus B. Held and a post-punk quartet from Birmingham, England, Fashion, Fabrique brought them together to create something that vastly outstretched their original influences. Fabrique saw them…
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These are the kinds of records that just mean the world to me. They’re the ones so full of potential, yet profoundly this…close to being lost in the cracks of history. What you’ll hear in 882 Studio is a very short and sweet compilation by three artists from the Japanese label Fitzbeat, a label mostly…
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