balearic
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A call to worship, that’s what do’a, the original Arabic-Persian name for New Age group Do’ah means. World Dance by Do’ah slots into that imperfect crevice where good ideas fall prey to bad ones (due to appearing over earnestness) look for one false move to write off the whole shebang written as unnecessary/dated. If you’ve…
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Heretofore, I bear witness that someone is going to come along and school me on my knowledge of K-Pop (and possibly Jang Pil-Soon herself). Therefore, whatever I’m going to write about Jang Pil-Soon’s 어느새 / 내작은 가슴속에 (which roughly translates to Suddenly/In My Little Heart) might require a huge asterisk beside it. It’s with romance…
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Faceless and nameless, but not without their charms. Library by Exotics is a fantastically twisted album that orbits between the worlds of power pop and electronic mutant funk. You’d think such a one-off would come out of nowhere, but there were seeds of who the Exotics were (and what they aimed to do) elsewhere.
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For those looking elsewhere for inspiration, you can turn your heads away from Japan, for just a moment. Let’s look back toward these United States. Here’s another gem from the forgotten Music West record label. Perhaps that label’s crown jewel, Kenneth Nash’s A Touch Of Kenneth Nash: Music From A Far Away Place epitomizes the…
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There’s always a lovely melodicism to Italian minimalist music. Lately, I’ve been fascinated by the works of little known Italian record label Stile Librero for that reason. Let me introduce you to a slice of this spirit, through the work of harpist Andrea Piazza who released his gorgeous debut album dubbed Tirtaganga on it.
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Guest Mix by Klas Trollius Editor’s Note: I thought about what FOND/SOUND reader Klas states below: “connected to place-making (by creating a certain atmosphere, specific to the time and place of a recording) and displacement (by transporting you to a mental, perhaps fleeting place in your own mind)” and it made me truly understand his mix, in…
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So very lovely. Forgive me if some of you are expecting something more experimental, electronic, or whatever else now. Me, I just want something like this. What is this? It’s the beginning of Ryokyu Endo’s sublime form of Japanese New Age music. In 1994, Ryokyu Endo’s Song Of Pure Land, or The Song Of Pure…
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“Endlessly moving, always alive” no better words can describe this album than Windsor Riley’s own. There’s no way around it, The Move Of Life sounds lame on paper. A late ‘80s release, on another nameless record label, trying to peddle harmless instrumental music that would be at home on the Weather Channel or your local dentist…
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Streams of understanding, via spiritual land bridges, or how a Navajo-Ute found a musical connection with Japanese sonorities/tradition. Somehow, I feel a sense of myself in this music. The first time I heard of Island Of Bows by R. Carlos Nakai (with the Wind Travelin’ Band, Shonosuke Ohkura, and Oki Kano) I was struck by…
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When Yasuaki Shimizu’s Mariah split up their story appeared to end there. Marica’s Jellyfish 海月 proves that Mariah was just a small part of the bigger slice of Japanese Pop music these same members created, that still merits rediscovery. Produced by ex-Mariah members Masanori Sasaji, Jimmy Murakawa, and Morio Watanabe, Jellyfish 海月 finds vocal jazz…
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