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It’s not often you get a peek at something legitimately different. Released in 1985, on Canadian record label Attic, Sounds from the Interior (The Music Interior Sampler) seems to mimic the iconic New Age Windham Hill Record Samplers of the ’80s. We all know the drill now. Frame a compelling nature scene on a stark white album…
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In these dark and foreboding times, it’s important to latch on to things that provide hope. Maybe that’s why the music of Poland has seemed so striking to me lately. The vast majority — at least the majority which remains unheard and “out-there” — of this music was the product of unimaginable restraints. Before the rise of Glasnost and Perestroika,…
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Do you really wanna know about hard times? Do you really wanna know about hard times? Three stone at de fire, cheese ‘pon a de pot de ‘ave all ‘ave all, an’ de ‘ave not ‘ave none We buck upon a hard time, we buck upon a hard time Do you really wanna know about…
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While I was researching this bit of music, I ran into this interview by Jean-Claude Vannier. In no uncertain terms, Jean-Claude tried to guide the interviewer away from asking questions about what he’s known for. If you’re known for something as iconic as arranging the music for Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson it would be easy…
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Some music is really hard to describe. Not because it’s indescribable, but because the vast amount of background info required to contextualize the work might be either a) too academic or b) too conceptual to get. Yoshi Ojima’s truly spartan website describes his music plainly as: Yoshio Ojima uses computers to program gentle, ambient music.…
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At least for me, some of the most interesting albums are the ones released by artists long after their much more lauded work. I say this, because these deep cuts usually detail a bit more history and show the weather of age a bit more clearly than earlier works. This is my thinking: what happens…
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If one would pick up a practice as a musician, one wouldn’t normally pick up the kantele as a focus. Of Finnish descent, this instrument that features close to 40-strings, whose closest relatives are a hammered dulcimer, zither, or a Japanese koto, requires nearly devotional study to accurately pick up all its nuances and capabilities.…
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My apologies to David Lynch fans, but when I imagine what the music of Twin Peaks should be, I imagine something more along this profound piece of music from Toshifumi Hinata than the real life, final product. I say this, because Toshifumi Hinata’s Sarah’s Crime captures a fully idealized musical vision of an in-between feeling. It’s…
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What’s there to say about an unheralded classic? The origin story is already there for the taking: in 1972, fresh of recording their revolutionary Kazemachi Roman, pioneering Japanese band led by musical visionaries like Haruomi Hosono, Eiichi Ohtaki, and Shigeru Suzuki, travel to Los Angeles in hopes of recording an album more in tune with a huge source…
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NOTE: Today, I’m digging back into the A-Track, A-Day archives for a gorgeous piece of autumnal music, Virginia Astley’s From Gardens Where We Feel Secure, one that still remains too criminally hard to find. No matter, it’s my sonic balm for you, today. You can find a lot of what I said then below, but what do I think about…
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