ambient
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When I think of summer, when I think of the vibrancy of this season, I think of albums like the Ten Plants series, spearheaded by video game composers Nobuo Uematsu and Toshiyuki Sasagawa.
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While this blog may seem like it looks backward, it is actually in service of looking forward. I firmly believe that exploring new territory sometimes requires circling back to forgotten places. Right now, I’m exploring where Japanese ambient music left off after its early, pioneering “environmental and healing” period with artists like Hiroshi Yoshimura, Toshifumi…
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If you’re like me, sometimes all it takes is one listen to feel that a certain album or artist should have made a bigger mark. When I listen to Yow Okazaki’s Damage, with its fusion of hip-hop, techno, ambient and French Pop-influenced acid jazz, I think: now here’s music that merits a certain introduction.
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Trance Nature Sounds. I feel like anything I say about Hariyo Remixe’s might not do justice to the music as clearly as what you see on its album cover.
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There’s a fine line between background music and background music. It’s something that’s easier to hear than explain. And one way to do so, is to introduce you to the melodious environmental music of Kyoji Ohno and specifically, his, Kutsurogi (サイコジェネシス・シリーズ くつろぎ) .
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The chirp of crickets, a babbling brook, the melodies of a songbird, certain things trigger a sense of new life or of spring settling in. I say this because I feel the same way about Jimi Chen’s Discovering Arts Behind The Mountains 發現後山的藝術, his “character music” soundtrack for a documentary of the same name (which…
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Listening to Yukihiro Fukutomi’s music takes me back to a different time. It reminds me of the first time I encountered Japanese music. If anyone else remembers this, it was staying up late at night to tune in to MTV’s AMP. It was on AMP that someone like me – far, far, far, from any…
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Often, if possible, I make an effort to read original liner notes to any of the albums I share. I do so because, usually, it gives me an idea (or alludes to a certain sentiment) of what the original artist was trying to convey with their work. However, more often than not, other writers (much…
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Doesn’t it feel like sometimes all we need is a little push? When I hear Summer Lei’s debut, 我我是雷光夏 (I Am Lei Guangxia), I meditate on what we sometimes stand to lose simply by not taking that first step. Pastoral, experimental, and quite immediate, personal, and warm, rightfully, so much of what makes this music…
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When I wrote about Rie Miyazawa, I knew I’d have to come back to share another interesting side trip she’d take. In this case, it’s Rie’s work with Tadashi Namba and Takeshi Itoh on Tokyo Elevator Girl (東京エレベーターガール), a fascinating coda to her inspiring early ‘90s period, a soundtrack to Japanese TV drama of the…
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