art pop
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Some of my favorite artists are those that fluctuate along the same wavelength as yours truly. One of these is the incomparable Ayuo Takahashi. Never moored by any specific idea, his vision is expansive — all is fair game in his musical world. From English folk to mystic Persian devotionals, to electro and mutant funk,…
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First things first: Please go to Noka’s Youtube channel and hit “subscribe” to thank them for sharing this first. None other than sharing other fascinating nuggets of Japanese indie rock, punk, and techno, he made me make a snap decision. In light of all that’s going around us, rather than share another bit of (perhaps)…
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What happens if you mix the Everly Brothers and Kraftwerk? The answer you’re supposed to hear should be: Adolphson-Falk’s Med Rymden I Blodet. However, I don’t think it quite is. Taking inspiration from both those iconic bands yet doing something decidedly different, is what led me to write about one of Sweden’s least heralded pop…
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If it seems like this is becoming a yearly tradition here, who knows? It might be. Yes, it’s another mix of some of my favorite love songs for Valentine’s Day. If you know anything about me is that I’m a big softie at heart. And part and parcel with this comes my sincere (no pun…
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Truth be told, few records in my collection sound like Esther Ofarim’s Complicated Ladies. Well, truth be told, few albums will ever sound like it either…in anyone’s collection. A mixture of Israeli melismatic jazz with German liedermacher wouldn’t sound too out of the ordinary (at least in some circles). However, let’s say someone decided to…
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Don’t you just love it when everything comes together? Kenji Sawada must have taken forever to match up his forward-thinking persona with his stagecraft and music, but on Aux Femmes 女たちよ) it all fell into place. Toying with gender, electronics, and all sorts of compositional elements, Aux Femmes 女たちよ proved he just wasn’t some emptyheaded…
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Was the world ever ready for Thomas Leer? Listening back to Thomas’s The Scale Of Ten one can hear all the potential there. It’s this theme of tweaking a recipe. Here it was to make his once abrasive, experimental blue-eyed soul into a chromed-out beast, outfitted in Fairlight CMI clothing, permeating with giant-sized hooks. In…
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Guest post by Giacomo Lee. You’d think being in one of the biggest cult Japanese bands of the ’90s would make one of your biggest side projects pretty well known, but Yasuharu Konishi’s Girl Girl Girl must be the exception to that rule.
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Life sure has it mysteries. Years ago, I encountered Naoki Asai’s gorgeous Aba · Heidi and had to share an album I feared would be lost to time. Privately pressed, and featuring an eclectic mixture of Lewis Caroll-like psychedelia and jangly post-punk (think Pale Fountains, The Smiths, etc.), its accompanying haunting design signaled that Aber…
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This might sound like yet that same old story: Noted folkloric or jazz muso discovers drum machines, synths, and samplers, proceeds to turn into both a sweeping statement unlike anything else in their oeuvre/pisses old fans off. I can play Madlibs with my write-up for Joan Bibiloni’s For A Future Smile and substitute Lisboa-native Júlio…
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