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Where does one start with Yukako Hayase? That’s the question I asked myself when debating, for what seemed like forever, what would be the album I would recommend others to explore, to give them a better sense of why Yukako is such a deeply important artist (and one sadly lost to time). Thankfully, with time,…
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…Behind the – Behind the Wall – Under the Tree…or right here, after a long scroll to the bottom of this post you might find my favorite release by Swiss-born Andreas Vollenweider. Now more widely known his placid work backing up Carly Simon or his milquetoast New Age, “fantasy” music, there was a time when…
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Released on Wacoal Art Center’s NEWSIC label, Yoshiaki Ochi’s Natural Sonic shares some of the same magic heard in the music of fellow roster mates Yoshio Ojima, Motohiko Hamase, and Mich Live. This time the aural trick would be one of the most simple of them all. Largely composed, conceived, and performed on organic material…
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One name stuck out to me when listening to Japanese label Shi Zen’s wonderful Windham Hill-like compilation Shizen Collection ’87, it was Masayuki Sakamoto’s contribution “Psy’chy”. Even with other, like-minded Japanese New Age artists like Sojiro, Kiminori Atsuta, and the parent label’s creator Kitaro, there was always a high amount of cheesy aplomb in the…
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Other than being a great proponent of why we need paid maternity leave in America, Tabo’s Project Eyes Of A Child is a great proponent of how many hidden gems in Japan’s musical history are still left to be rediscovered. A balearic masterpiece, or walearic (if we’re being pedantic), Eyes of a Child was conceived in…
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It took two guiding lights to shepherd me through this mix I created for Mexico City’s brilliant Mitamine cultural curation blog. First, I knew the beginning had to start with Lins & Ford’s “Fast Roads” and it’s end had to be with Kyoko Koizumi’s “Eastern Jungle”. They felt like thematic book ends to something bigger. What was…
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These are the kinds of albums that really live with you. Sao Paolo native, Edson Natale’s name may be the lead on the album cover, his visage may be the one seen folding in the background (with guitar in hand), but its those other small names around him that make Nina Maika such a beautiful…
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Some music you discover, and some simply grabs you instantly. For me, the music of Suba, the brilliant Serbian musician Mitar Subotić, is one of them. The line between atmospheric, ambient, New Age, and environmental music is so thin, that to render one type of music, a certain something misses the whole point. With Mitar…
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You can always hear music in Steve Hiett’s photography. You can definitely hear the music on the cover of his solo debut, Down On The Road By The Beach. Heavily saturated with color, mesmerizingly flash-lit, and warmly off-center, this image was like an Edgar Degas painting come to life – albeit one fashioned with Miami’s…
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Lightness, sweetness, and melancholia those are things that define Tom Jobim’s career. You don’t need me to regurgitate a whole Wikipedia page to stress his heralded place in Brazilian music history. Together with João Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim allowed for things like space, quietness, and off-beats to have a place in pop music. Everything we…
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