balearic

Peter Richard: Frozen Red (1983)

2017/02/27

imeless Italo-disco featuring an album cover its designer could only love, it’s Walter Beinat’s (aka Peter Richard) Frozen Red. The album’s main hook is the unsung club banger “Walking In the Neon.” Nearly seven minutes long, the audacious electronic mix of Hi-NRG, post-punk, and post-disco still gives rise to a constant DJ request: what the hell was that? Quite atmospheric for such…
Virna Lindt: Shiver (1984)

2017/02/13

t’s impossible to know how much to believe of Swedish journalist, model, linguist, literary agent, interpreter, and musician Virna Lindt’s backstory. Before the creation of Shiver, it is said that in 1981, while traveling by train to London she met local record producer/artist Tot Taylor and told him of her plan to record an album that would be…
Mind Over Matter: Music For Paradise (1987)

2017/02/06

traight from Duisburg, Germany comes the impressive debut from Klaus Hoffmann-Hoock (otherwise known as Cosmic Hoffmann) on Klaus Schulze’s wonderful Innovative Communication record label. Music For Paradise was Klaus’s attempt to present his spiritual journey from space-disco cosmic man to “woke” Eastern-influenced musician, via various forms of musical movements. Originally titled “Music for Meditation”, somewhere, along its phase from demo…
Mario Acquaviva: Mario Acquaviva EP (1983)

2017/02/01

ven in the dead of the winter, this sunlit EP of Italian Pop can break through any forecast. One of my favorite finds of the year was this brief, but spectacular, EP by Bolognese musician Mario Acquaviva. What’s in Mario Acquaviva? Its eighteen masterful minutes of ruminative springtime Mediterranean piano pop mixed with all sorts of found…
Matia Bazar: Tango (1983)

2017/01/25

ot every album reveals itself instantly. It took me a while to recognize how fascinating Tango by Matia Bazar really was. Imagine, for a second, that ABBA didn’t break up after The Visitors. Imagine that they found a way to continue on after that fan demarcation line, and boldly go wherever that new point of inspiration they had,…
Apsaras: Apsaras (1984)

2017/01/18

How do you classify a six-piece Japanese band like Apsaras? Their debut album Apsaras definitely covers a ton of bases. Let’s count all the genres that they bring into their musical mix: dub, new age, minimalism, vocoder funk, balearic, are a few. Heck, you even hear the glimmers of Afropop and Jazz-Fusion. How many genres have I mentioned so far?…
Tony Esposito: Il Grande Esploratore (1984)

2017/01/06

If ever you’re in Naples, bring up Tony Esposito, and thank me later. Part of the new Neapolitan Power scene envisioned by Tullio de Piscopo, James Senese, and Pino Daniele, Tony proved to be the one closest to bringing that sound out of the Mediterranean and onto the world. A rhythm master all his life, Tony Esposito’s Il Grande Esploratore remains one of the pinnacles of…
Joan Bibiloni: Joana Lluna (1982)

2016/12/30

I had a really hard time trying to justify posting this album. Not because the album isn’t great – it truly is – but because it didn’t seem this time of the year was appropriate for it. Joan Bibiloni’s Joana Lluna is the first masterpiece by the Mallorcan balearic master. What you hear in Joana…
MUJI: BGM 1980-2000 (2000)

2016/12/23

I ran into a predicament when sussing out this post. How does one describe MUJI if one hasn’t actually experienced it? It’s entirely easy to simplify what this brand is by calling it the Japanese IKEA and call it a day. However, from what I can tell, that’s not really what MUJI is, or stands for. And for…
Mix: 2. Quiet Departures

2016/12/19

All I could think about while creating this second mix was Kapalbhati Pranayama. I wanted to treat you to two hours of music that exactly presented what this idea means to me. Kapalbhati Pranayama is the sanskrit phrase for “Breath of Fire”. In a cross-legged, seated position one tries to create internal heat without actually moving the…