• t’s impossible to know how much to believe of Swedish journalist, model, linguist, literary agent, interpreter, and musician Virna Lindt’s backstory. Before the creation of Shiver, it is said that in 1981, while traveling by train to London she met local record producer/artist Tot Taylor and told him of her plan to record an album that would be…

  • assively influenced by American R&B, Do You Like Japan? holds that rare thing for us as listeners: it’s a question posed in the title. Was ex-Plastics frontman Toshio Nakanishi asking us if we liked Japan or was he asking himself that same question? The answer would be hard to tell after you listen to the album. Created after his breakup…

  • he first year of Yen Record’s existence surely must have felt like a fruitful one for its famous YMO founders Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi. Initially begun as an imprint for the Alfa Records company, Yen Records became less of a way to release YMO side projects, and more as a way to expand upon the amount of musical ideas…

  • traight from Duisburg, Germany comes the impressive debut from Klaus Hoffmann-Hoock (otherwise known as Cosmic Hoffmann) on Klaus Schulze’s wonderful Innovative Communication record label. Music For Paradise was Klaus’s attempt to present his spiritual journey from space-disco cosmic man to “woke” Eastern-influenced musician, via various forms of musical movements. Originally titled “Music for Meditation”, somewhere, along its phase from demo…

  • rquesta de las Nubes, The Cloud Orchestra, isn’t really an orchestra, that we know for sure. What it is is a trio of Spanish musicians aiming to make music that was unlike anything else. While researching the history behind the band I ran across interviews by founder Suso Sáiz mentioning how even they themselves didn’t know the type…

  • ven in the dead of the winter, this sunlit EP of Italian Pop can break through any forecast. One of my favorite finds of the year was this brief, but spectacular, EP by Bolognese musician Mario Acquaviva. What’s in Mario Acquaviva? Its eighteen masterful minutes of ruminative springtime Mediterranean piano pop mixed with all sorts of found…

  • here’s always a tinge of nostalgia I feel when I play any album by a Clube Da Esquina alum. Once you hear that Minas Gerais sound, it’s easy to spend all day just going back trying to rediscover or share these forgotten gems of dreamy Pop music. There are simply so many forgotten, inspiring albums out there, from that region, and that…

  • The definitive version of the definitive Nyabinghi album, that’s what you’ll find here today. Filled with religious fervor unheard –and in such dosage– on any other Lee “Scratch” Perry produced release, Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus’ Love Thy Neighbour holds the distinction of both being one of Lee’s finest productions and also one that would signal the…

  • ot every album reveals itself instantly. It took me a while to recognize how fascinating Tango by Matia Bazar really was. Imagine, for a second, that ABBA didn’t break up after The Visitors. Imagine that they found a way to continue on after that fan demarcation line, and boldly go wherever that new point of inspiration they had,…

  • A perfect album for our alternate reality, filled with alternative facts. In a perfect world there would be lines upon lines of information out there written on Naoki Asai’s アバ・ハイジ (Aber Heidschi). Unfortunately, in our imperfect world all we have is one (!!!) brave blog post even attempting to suss out what in the world Naoki Asai…

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