balearic
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There’s just something about Valentine’s Day that stirs me to share music steeped in that feeling. If you know me, you know I love “love songs.” I firmly believe that the hardest songs to write are those that touch on love (in its myriad meanings). It’s what led me this time around to cut to…
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One of my favorite things to discover and hear in music is how ideas translate across genres and borders. Listening to Midori’s Vortex Symphony, I get the sense that they share a similar spirit of discovery. Yes, this is “dream pop,” but it isn’t the dream pop we usually imagine – it’s the kind that…
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Life is something, right? When I conceived of my latest mix for my LYL Radio show, I wanted to capture a certain spirit: that of gently percolating music that bubbles at the edges but never quite reaches a boiling point. My thought was, “On certain trying days, we all need music that consoles us, that…
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To quote a famous repartee: “Nevertheless, she persisted.” If one could attach a north star to Kay Huang (黃韻玲), it would be that – a persistence that paid off, showing the mettle she’s made of. With fall hovering in the air, and just days past its recent reissue and Kay’s birthday, let’s revisit (or more…
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As I write, it sometimes takes me a beat to realize just how connected I am to a person’s story, just as much as I am to their music. Reflecting on the life of the recently departed Serge Guirao, whose long struggle with multiple sclerosis ended in 2021, I’m reminded that for some of us,…
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Sometimes, you just have to go where the breeze takes you. That’s something that’s become clear to me lately. This summer, I decided to scale back the time I’ve devoted to the blog and simply go outside and enjoy life (with music). So, when it was time for my LYL Radio show, I thought: why…
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When I think of “relaxation music,” I envision music with a Brazilian touch. It’s that kind of music that carries a certain breeze, a sense of yearning, and bittersweetness that evokes the transition between the heat of summer and the coolness of fall. In considering Japan, as we often do, my thoughts turn to Jun…
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Sometimes, it’s the combined power of simpatico ideas that yields the biggest payoff. I remind myself of this whenever I listen to the wonderfully sunny, “summery” music of Carole Serrat. Made in Japan but born in France, Carole’s OSE serves as a perfect gateway into a little-known bit of musical symbiosis.
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Once again, we’re back at the shoreline or more like: I can’t seem to leave the water’s edge. As summer continues to wind down, I keep going back to explore my kind of deep easy listening: “resort music.” My mind and ears keep heading down to the early works of Moonriders’s Masahiro Takekawa and his…
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With nearly everyone transitioning into late summer, my mind (and ears) lately come back to Yoko Kanno’s music. It’s not Yoko’s out-there jazz for Cowboy Bebop nor her cyberdelic contemporary work on anime like Macross Plus. No, it’s Yoko Kanno’s little-heralded, windswept, breezy, Balearic soundtracks for Koei’s 大航海時代 (aka Uncharted Waters) video game series.
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