balearic
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A leftfield reimagining of vaunted Afro-Cuban jazz classics, in a new school “futuristic” Japanese Pop style, shouldn’t sound so interesting as it does in Today’s Latin Project. Launched on the demise of one famous group (The Tokyo Cuban Boys) and the rise of one important, new musical voice, Yasuaki Shimizu, you’d expect something titled Today’s…
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Somehow, I’m stumbling on a theme. This is the second start of the week where I share the utterly brilliant work of another ethnomusicologist. In today’s case, it’s for good reason, I have to share what I consider is one of the Balearic masterpieces — Riccardo Giagni’s Kaunis Maa. Perfect for summer, Kaunis Maa is…
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“Inspired ethnological musical exploration from an unlikely source.” — what better way to describe Michael Atherton’s Windshift? Michael Atherton might best be known in Australia as one of it’s leading scholars and practitioners of Aboriginal and Pan-Pacific music but somewhere in his history lies a fantastic composer/musician who understood a fourth way to bridge all…
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My apologies to my less than trusty Google Translation app, but there are only a few things I can describe as legibly belonging in the shared space of Yuki Nakayamate’s Octopussy. Names like Roxy Music, Matia Bazar, August Darnell (as part of Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band and Kid Creole and the Coconuts), and Grace…
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Here’s another leftfield one from the Windham Hill label. A high mixture of Latin American rhythms, warm digital synthesis, and exploratory brass instruments, High Plateaux by the Argentine-Mexican duo of Bernardo Rubaja and Cesar Hernandez, cement itself as one of the high points and sadly little, further defined areas of little-known Latin American New Age…
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For this mix for LYL Radio I was feeling more than a tinge of nostalgia. Somehow, one day, hearing the plaintive tones of Pat Metheny’s “Sueño Con Mexico” got me reminiscing about where I come from and how much of the music I love comes from music that triggers memories of things I heard when…
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It’s not often you encounter the work of a percussionist who is as wildly as inventive as one can be, yet can be prone to veering off where (he should know better) that none should follow, such is Brian Slawson’s Distant Drums which gets an unequivocal recommendation from me. Mr. Slawson is much like your…
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And now for some early magic from notable J-Pop producer and songwriter Keiichi Tomita aka Tomita Lab. Complete Samples by KEDGE, for all intents and purposes, is the work of one mind: Keiichi’s. A superbly fun and surprisingly complex work, it reminds me of some of the best stuff from Japan’s earlier City Pop and…
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Uman, pronounced (YOO-mahn), was a unique group. Vacillating from many visions — world music, ambient, jazz, and many uncategorizable things — this French sibling duo has never been a group to easily pigeonhole. Chaleur Humaine, their debut, I think, is a perfectly birthed idea of what they can do. Chaleur Humaine exists in that gray…
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I’m at a loss what to classify the late, great Hideki Mitsumori’s 彩 Colours as. It’s obviously heavily indebted to world music and to all sorts of ethno-music flavors but it’s completely digital with no acoustic instrument in sight. Much like Apsaras, the previous band he led, keyboardist Hideki Mitsumori trades in Japanese New Age…
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