art pop

  • Totem proves there’s more than one genius behind the Shimizu family tree. Rightfully, it gives you a peek into the deeply brilliant leftfield ideas of Mieko Shimizu, joining brother Yasuaki Shimizu as another  unique branch from that musical lineage. Finding herself in the UK, in 1988, Mieko signed with Chris Cutler’s (of Henry Cow), of…

  • Let’s do things recursively. Mekong Zoo’s Minimal Dance is exactly as its written — dance music with minimal gestures. Minimal Dance is the unlikely collaboration between two quietly pioneering Japanese female musicians and another intriguing one from England. A hybrid mix of world music, jazz, ambient, neoclassical, and burgeoning techno, it’s piece together all these…

  • How do you portray someone who is unrepresentable? French composer, artist, and songwriter Thierry Matioszek’s Matioszek provides a distorted view of the many moods of Thierry. I thoroughly enjoy it, perhaps, knowing that it’s nearly alien to the other releases Thierry had done before (and perhaps to the things he’d continue elsewhere or be more…

  • In a not-so-recent interview with Vice Italy, Lino Capra Vaccina laments that out of his recently reissued work we’re missing most of the picture of what he was trying to do. While Antico Adagio was one of these wonderful totems of Italian minimalism, it wasn’t until a decade, or so, later, in the mega rare…

  • Who knows what would have happened in France if New Yorker Valli Timbert hadn’t met filmmaker Philippe Bourgoin, at some Chelsea Hotel, in the late ‘70s? Philippe, not pictured on the cover of Chagrin D’Amour’s self-titled debut, was the French artiste who had fallen in love with rap early on in 1979. Then, via The…

  • Seems like the perfect time to sneak this one through ye olde FOND/SOUND blog. Led by Makoto Matsushita, proud creator of one of City Pop’s timeless gems (First Light), and Chris Mosdell, proud creator of this totally slept on “Japanese” techno-pop gem, comes this decidedly different collaboration called Paradigm Shift. Like its namesake, it actually does…

  • It would be easy to supplant whatever I stated in my post for Nuno Canavarro’s Plux Quba and simply transport it here. If we include Roberto Musci & Giovanni Venosta’s Water Messages On Desert Sand, as another trafficking in that gorgeous unplaceable thing — then we can think of it as another forgotten reimagining of…

  • “If you have taste, your long neck is an asset, your small stature is an asset, that crooked smile is an asset… Elegance is innate. It has nothing to do with being well dressed. Elegance is refusal.” – Diana Vreeland (ex-editor of Vogue/Bazaar magazine). It seems highly appropriate, and better stated, to use her words…

  •   The tale of Righeira appears weirder and weirder, the more I dig into it. Something about their self-titled debut is both so absolutely bananas and perfectly so. For the most part, we all know their hits/ear worms: “Vamos A La Playa” and “No Tengo Dinero”, but digging further one can be left more than…

  • Lou Lou Mon Amour (ルール・モナムール)

    For some reason, I’ve been sitting on this album for a long while just waiting for the right season to share it. It’s Everything Play’s Lou Lou Mon Amour (ルール・モナムール) who I owe a huge debt of gratitude to one fellow reader, Wes Almond, who has an equally fascinating Youtube channel who we all should…

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