balearic
-
The dream continues…coming in next, but arguably first in its conception, is my mix for Radio Jiro on NTS. In this mix I’ll continue to flesh out this esoteric idea of Walearic music. As mentioned in my previous Walearic mix, it’s a conceptual genre of Japanese music looking beyond strict influence from western Pop music and turning it’s eye instead…
-
It’s hard for me to separate Mick’s past from the work you’ll hear in Titles. Still impossibly underrated and unaccounted for — compared to the actual influence he put in motion — there is just something truly unique found in the late Mick Karn’s bass technique, musicality, and ideas. Titles, his first solo work after leaving Japan,…
-
Tread lightly, oh you who hate slap bass. Jorge Degas and Marcelo Salazar’s positively radiant Muxima has only two roles pushing all songs along: drum and percussion. Apropos they would remix Matisse’s “The Dance” into their own Afro-centered interpretative design. Deep, deep, Brazilian jazz funk that frequently oversteps its boundaries to go into the realm of…
-
The early instrumental work by German guitar duo Martin Kolbe and Ralf Illenberger is quite breathtaking. When one hears of a guitar duo, immediately one assumes the worst: verbose technicality over concise emotion, bluesy runs used as crutches to help them work together, and a general lack of understanding of what a duo is (and…
-
It is with great joy that I’ve decided to share Killing Time’s Irene. Undoubtedly one of the toughest groups to describe on this hear blog, Killing Time hovers among so many styles and moods that to render them one thing or another would miss the point of their existence. Irene, though, in 1988, perfectly placed…
-
Günther Beckers music has a perfect word for it: Gesamtkunstwerk. Gesamtkunstwerk is an interdisciplinary artistic work combining various disciplines — music, painting, poetry and design. Wagner conjured up this idea when trying to produce a work that could also wrap in artistic ideas derived from theatrical, poetic, and musical influences. Aesthetics would be the English word…
-
A personal favorite of mine, not because it’s his greatest work — I’d wager more people expect the late, great Swedish guitar maestro Thomas Almqvist’s Balearic masterpiece Nyanser to be that one — but because it’s the one that sounds the most honest to where I come from. Thomas Almqvist’s The Journey was his second…
-
I was going to write about how much I appreciate all of you, the readers, who keep visiting this blog and give your precious time to discover music I feel passionate about. It’s been over a year since FOND/SOUND began. It’s because of your encouragement and support that this labor of love keeps going. With…
-
Proof positive that maybe the Germans were on to something. In 1979, the independent German music critics’ association bestowed upon Santiago’s Walking the Voodoo Nights their highest honor, the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis. For album of the year — knee deep in the time of punk and post-punk — one wouldn’t think that such a high honor…
-
One of the ultimate statements in sleaze. Some Discog commenter put it better than I ever would: “If cocaine were music, this album would be the result.” Helmed by German post-disco mastermind Zeus B. Held and a post-punk quartet from Birmingham, England, Fashion, Fabrique brought them together to create something that vastly outstretched their original influences. Fabrique saw them…
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