balearic
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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…
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Thatcher’s England must have been a messed up time to grow up in, right? At the height of her pull, Essex group, I-Level, released a wonderfully romantic, uptempo electronic-R&B single called “Minefield” near after England’s ridiculous war with Argentina and promptly got banned from the radio. Trying to go for their third, hit single, with…
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More Dutch love for these close-to-summer days. The final album by Nasmak, Silhouette, truth be told, was a sell-out. And truth be told, was absolutely their best work. I imagine it was a hard sell to quantify back then, take a spellbinding blend of Japanese-indebted electronic pop, mix in the sinewy, fretless-bass sound of Japan-”the…
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Here’s another album I’ve been holding off forever, waiting just for the right time of the year to share it. Kyoko Furuya’s 冷たい水 (otherwise known as Cool Water) embodies everything that was intriguing about the influential Japanese label Better Days’ short-lived existence. Kyoko Furuya’s 冷たい水 features a kaleidoscopic vision of what Japanese Pop can be…
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Someone, somewhere, (maybe a massive Polish Jazz aficionado), is absolutely, positively going to hate me for doing this: but I have to profess/confess my absolute love for Urszula Dudziak’s Ulla. Riding that same copacetic wavelength as Maki Asakawa’s Nothing At All To Lose, Urszula Dudziak’s Ulla transformed someone known as the Yoko Ono, Linda Sharrock,…
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I’m still venturing to think that 1992 must have been a very special time for Japan. If you caught my post about Hiroshi Fujiwara’s Subliminal Calm you would be wise to notice a shift in mindspace and soundspace taking hold then and there. Serious economic bubbles popping had led to a younger generation to grapple…
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Life is something special, isn’t it? That’s something you can palpably feel in the music of Larry Levan. When he introduced music to the dancefloor he reimagined the music in a way the originals (possibly) never imagined. In a way he made that music everyone’s. Was Gwen Guthrie’s music ever truly hers? Was it ever…
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What is it today? Over here, in the U.S. it’s the Friday just before Memorial Day, a long holiday weekend. Yes, it’s that time of the year when our minds turn to summer — and at least my mind — it turns to music that’s even brighter, funkier, perhaps, something more suited for the weather.…
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Marcus Miller, this is your redemption song. Marcus Miller. Marcus Miller, man, where do I begin? For so long, had I absolutely loathe what you did to one of my all-time favorite musicians. It was your slap bass that figuratively sunk Miles Davis’s career when he needed you the most — really. You were the…
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Now, I finally feel that we’re ready for an album like Mebae Miyahara’s Port･fo･lio. But first a huge thanks to Giacomo Lee for sharing it with me and, by extension, with us. Full of wonderfully gorgeous, lilting tropical techno-pop, Port･fo･lio should instantly remind you of all those artists you might have heard in the recent Walearic…
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