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Now this, this right here, is the promised boogie wonderland. The late Michele Francesco Puccioni’s (aka Mike Francis) 1984 debut is that unheralded statement piece of funk and R&B music that once you have your chance to get your hands on you’ll never forget. Let’s Not Talk About It was the product of some hard-earned…
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Power can manifest itself in many ways. Power isn’t always in the density of something but in the lightness of it. Kenji Omura’s spirited take on funk, sophisticated pop, and so many other smooth genres comes together into one powerful album: Gaijin Heaven. The late, great Kenji Omura, one time or some time YMO guitarist,…
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When conceiving my latest mix all I could think about was the works of master Impressionist painters. Where other painters try to highlight the contours and contrasts shapes, objects, and environments have between each other, these Impressionists tried to understand connections found among still and moving life. It’s an understanding of the beauty of gradients…
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We might not all be able to know the way to get on that righteous path but there are signals that could help us get there. These are ones found merely by observing that walk to it, in others. Adrian Sherwood’s experimental reggae and dub label On-U Sound wouldn’t have been what it came to…
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Takashi Toyoda’s Big Bang promises in the back cover “total spiritual stability and stress relief” through 40-odd minutes of Japanese New Age music. What really stands out, though, is the word “BIG BANG” in the album title. Attempting to provide some respite from a stark external world, Takashi tries to create the first 1/f fluctuation…
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So cool and forgotten. Very little is explored from such an integral member of the Art of Noise, that’s what makes this work enticing and exciting. Anne Dudley’s bite-sized background music for audio visual, television, radio, films, jingles, slide presentations, and advertising – part of a larger, less interesting “muzak” series – achieves exactly what…
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There is a time in any good musician’s life when they absolutely nail down whatever they had to place. Akira Ito, one time keyboardist for influential Japanese psych rock outfit The Far East Band, could have stayed with that group rehashing “out there” musical troupes – variations on psychedelia with The FABs or Kitaro-like, Jean-Michel…
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Heavy, shamanic, tectonic Fourth World music from French-American composer, of Cherokee descent, Steve Shehan. Primarily a percussionist, Steve developed his own improvisational recording method to be able to capture the moody, spiritual, polyrhythmic music of his favorite Indonesian music tradition, working to translate it to modern environs and add other non-Western influences from the Middle…
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There are so many sides this next recording could fall under: New Age, ambient, environmental music, muzak, tone poems – I choose to give Dan Gibson’s Harmony: Exploring Nature With Music a personal tip of the hat in the direction of worthwhile music. A native of Montreal, Dan Gibson was the internationally renowned wildlife film-maker who…
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Let’s try a little tenderness from Mitsuru Sawamura, otherwise known as Mich Live, one-time member of Japanese band Interior (with whom he wrote songs like “Luft” and “Park“) and brilliant session musician for others like Yukihiro Takahashi, Hajime Tachibana, Pierre Barouh, and Mari Iijima. In 1988, Mitsuru released under the Newsic label (home of Yoshio Ojima) something that straddles…
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