balearic

The Milky Way: Summertime Love Song (1979)

2017/09/01

Pull out your surfboard, put some sangria on ice, and really enjoy this one. A surprisingly unknown masterpiece, and a rare, rare, rare one at that, of Japanese City Pop, J-AOR, or light mellow, no matter what you call The Milky Way’s Summertime Love Song, one thing you can’t say it is is uninspired. Released…
Regrets: Agathe (1985)

2017/08/25

Entirely slept-on, to the point that it still boggles my mind how with all the recent reissues and rediscoveries of artists like Telex, Alec Mansion, Li Garattoni, and Linda DiFranco – artists who skirted the line of Balearic, electro-pop, post-disco, and boogie – there hasn’t been room for someone to be woke enough to Montpellier’s…
Joachim Witt: Moonlight Nights (1985)

2017/08/18

If anyone knows me, they’d know this album forms a perfect storm of what I dig about music. I love it when someone actually aims to “sell out” by doing it in such a way that everyone is left dumbfounded by the product of that intended vision. There is one “right” way to pull that…
Triangulus and Björn J:son Lindh: Triangulus and Björn J:son Lindh (1986)

2017/08/16

Hard to describe what’s going on in Triangulus and Björn J:son Lindh. The closest analog I could think of would be what would happen if the Alan Parson’s Project relocated to the island of Majorca and replaced their members with Swedish electro-acoustic minimalists. Imagine a very math-y (complex, musical time signatures galore) version of Balearic…
Katsutoshi Morizono: 4:17 p.m. (1985)

2017/08/09

There’s an appeal to Katsutoshi Morizono’s 4:17 p.m. that can only be heightened, or fully appreciated, during summer, our current time of the year. Cycling from truly elegant compositions – a frequent, recurring theme lately on the blog – 4:17 p.m. mixes jazz fusion, post-bossanova, reggae, light mellow/City Pop, and even experimental bits of New Age…
Alain Chamfort: Amour, Année Zéro

2017/08/02

I almost hate myself for sharing this. It’s like eating a slice of sublime dark chocolate cake, followed by a full spread of some fine charcuterie, chased with some sumptuous Riesling. Obviously, it’s too rich and not entirely good for you…but man is it refined and tasty when you’re devouring it. That’s exactly the…
Ritmia: Forse Il Mare (1986)

2017/07/26

Nothing makes one cringe more than when someone tries to “modernize” traditional music. The issue isn’t with modernization but with trying to will it so that “traditional” music has no way of becoming modern other than by adding modernity to it. What does this all mean? It means that the jaw-dropping music of Italian quartet…
Mike Francis: Let’s Not Talk About It (1984)

2017/07/21

Now this, this right here, is the promised boogie wonderland. The late Michele Francesco Puccioni’s (aka Mike Francis) 1984 debut is that unheralded statement piece of funk and R&B music that once you have your chance to get your hands on you’ll never forget. Let’s Not Talk About It was the product of some hard-earned…
Kenji Omura: Gaijin Heaven (1983)

2017/07/19

Power can manifest itself in many ways. Power isn’t always in the density of something but in the lightness of it. Kenji Omura’s spirited take on funk, sophisticated pop, and so many other smooth genres comes together into one powerful album: Gaijin Heaven. The late, great Kenji Omura, one time or some time YMO guitarist,…
Mix: 5. Trás-os-Montes

2017/07/14

When conceiving my latest mix all I could think about was the works of master Impressionist painters. Where other painters try to highlight the contours and contrasts shapes, objects, and environments have between each other, these Impressionists tried to understand connections found among still and moving life. It’s an understanding of the beauty of gradients…