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You know, sometimes the hardest part is making a decision. And in my case, it’s selecting the crown jewel amongst so many diamonds. But the choice has been made. The choice is Toshinobu Kubota’s absolutely personal heartfelt ode to the Caribbean and its diaspora: Kubojah – Parallel World I.
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When writing about Viktor Lazlo, the musical alias of Sonia Dronier, my mind began to think of parallels. I kept thinking of the soft, beautiful, Impressionistic paintings of yore. Paintings that appear delicate from afar but reveal a different textural depth the closer you get to each canvas. I say this because I sense sympathetic…
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Summer. There’s just something about hearing that word, about living in that season, that brings a certain urgency in me. It’s the meaning I place behind it that allows me to express my best sense of self. It’s when I think this blog’s readers get to hear music that’s the closest to what I enjoy…
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I know some have posted this question to me before: “How do you pick what to share on the site?” I wish the answer was easier than: “vibes”. Yet, sometimes it’s not even that. Sometimes, it could be something far more ordinary, and dare I say, less placeable. It could be just one song that,…
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“I was born to sing” – so graces the words of Teresa Carpio, to the Japanese-version of her powerful pan-Asian debut, 心己许 (Tokyo Dreaming). And after listening to the record, who am I to disagree? Much like her voice, it was this record that finally expressed fully the range of her voice and her ideas.
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Sometimes, I think we’re all in need of some kind of palette cleanser. At the cusp of summer, the urge is to find more in-between season music. It’s with this in mind, that I’m breaking one of my cardinal rules for this blog and choosing to cover music closer to our station in life. It’s…
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You know, sometimes you’ve got to step back and realize that there’s only so much thread to pull at. It’s not ideal, but it’s something I keep reminding myself of when I have to write about (or share an album) much like Sha’aban Yahya’s Return To Jogja.
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How’s everyone doing? If you’re like me, perhaps, things are looking up. When I was going back a week or two thinking about where to take my latest LYL Radio mix, I kept looking at all the music I’ve gravitated towards to lately, and all of it was seemed joyful. So I thought: “there’s something…
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You know, there’s something strangely meditative about filling out a Discogs credit list. I find it so, because you feel like you contributed to artists getting their proper accreditation and also you getting a fuller picture of how something got made. So, when I finished populating Maria Kawamura’s 「春の夢」 – サンクタス – (or Spring Dream…
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The more I listen to Yang Xiao-lin’s 禧樂 (I Take You There), the more I’m impressed by how malleable folklore is. In the original liner notes, the words “elegant, pure, psychedelic, lively, remote and modern” are thrown as adjectives to describe this album. Myself, at first, I thought each word seemed to contradict the other…but…
ambient art pop art rock balearic brazilian electro-acoustic england environmental music experimental fourth world Funk fusion japan jazz minimalist mpb neo-folk neoclassical new age walearic