ambient
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With flowers blooming and all sorts of greenery coming to life, I think now would be the time to introduce you to the work Taipei’s Chen Yang and his 現代四季 (Modern Four Seasons). Kindly shared with me by fellow midwesterner, Chris J. Morris, 現代四季 (Modern Four Seasons) is a wonderful, lively work of little-heard or…
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A wiser person than me once said: serit arbores, quae alteri saeclo prosint or he that plants trees, loves others beside himself. It’s a saying that would later gain life as the old adage, “Blessed is he who plants trees under whose shade he will never sit.” I’m thinking of that phrase specifically because I’ve…
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I’ve always had a belief: it’s that you can really tell a lot about a person by what they listen to, how they create, or what inspires them to create. As I read interviews with today’s focus, Hajime Mizoguchi, I sense that his music speaks volume of the person he is. Elegant, graceful, yet uniquely…
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What exactly gives life to any inanimate object? Is it the way it looks? Is it the way we interact with it? Or is it the memories we attach to it? I imagine these were some of the many questions revolving around Yoshihiro Kanno’s head when he was invited to create environmental music to fill…
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You know, sometimes the struggle is simply trying to quantify how unique something is. I’ve been listening to Liu Xing’s 無所事 (To Do Nothing) for more than a while now and every time I try to find an angle to share it on the site, I backtrack and hold off (thinking I’ll do it and…
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“Now, we’re all under stress. What music do you need to get rid of it? You can find it with this.” – From the liner notes to ストレス・クリニック<自信がつく> (Stress Clinic) Couldn’t have said it better myself. You see, much like many of you, I am not immune to the stresses of life. And lord knows,…
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Brace yourselves, let’s see how far I can take this review of Javier Zuazu’s Cuaderno De Invierno (or A Winter Journal). What was this album? 50-odd minutes of Spanish New Age that hovers from impressionistic piano-led instrumentals and wonderfully, minimal, warm and tender ambient mood music. Throw in one gorgeous ballad and once again, I’m…
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Be honest. How many of you know someone (or are friends or acquaintances) with a certain somebody that in the way they act, the way they dress or think, seem not of this era? I keep thinking of this thought when I go back to Toshihiro Nakanishi’s music and this selection: You Make Me Blue.…
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I think, if I’m going to try to “sell” something to you, I should try to to sell it to myself first. For me, what instantly “gets” me about Chen Ming-chang’s music occurs around two minutes into “淡水騎車 (Riding In Danshui)” off this, his soundtrack to Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Dust In The Wind.
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Don’t ask me why but it seems that jewelry companies always find a way to leverage their buying power to commission others to create some of the most interesting music-related value propositions. In plain speak: I’m holding an album, 4℃’s Christmas Suite, given as a holiday gift to (what I imagine) were there well-to-do customers,…
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