experimental
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Man, what a world to we live in. Just this year Italy’s Archeo Recordings reissued Paolo Modugno’s intriguing debut Brise D’Automne. Once a member of Italian multi-media performance group O.A.S.I., what turned as a love for Middle Eastern and African music transformed into the exploration of new ways to interconnect the electronic with the acoustic…
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There is a time in any good musician’s life when they absolutely nail down whatever they had to place. Akira Ito, one time keyboardist for influential Japanese psych rock outfit The Far East Band, could have stayed with that group rehashing “out there” musical troupes – variations on psychedelia with The FABs or Kitaro-like, Jean-Michel…
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There are so many sides this next recording could fall under: New Age, ambient, environmental music, muzak, tone poems – I choose to give Dan Gibson’s Harmony: Exploring Nature With Music a personal tip of the hat in the direction of worthwhile music. A native of Montreal, Dan Gibson was the internationally renowned wildlife film-maker who…
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Deeply intricate and esoteric experimental percussion music from Netherland’s own Paleis Van Boem, which aptly translates to “Palace of Boom”. Now known – if you’re Dutch that is! – for their film and TV soundtracks, Paleis Van Boem actually had roots in the lecture halls of the Rotterdam Conservatory. This duo consisting of Martin Vonk and…
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In a way, everything you do circles back to where one comes from. All my life, somehow, I felt my own lineage and ancestry steeped in Mexico was some kind of relic of the past. That too many other cultures had managed to strive for something new and exciting, while my own remain stagnant. When NTS asked me to give…
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Music For Silent Movies, it’s all there in the title. Koji Ueno, one half of Japanese duo Guernica (the other half being Jun Togawa from Yapoos), takes their subversive take on the era of “The Greatest Generation” to its logical evolution/conclusion by creating a soundtrack to the lesser known sounds of that period. Thoughts of musique concrete, serialism,…
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New age records shouldn’t sound (or look!) as fun as German Büdi Siebert’s Hmm…, but I wager no one ever asked Büdi where his records should be classified. If I could compare him to anyone, it would most likely be Don Cherry, a similar artist who has no specific style but a magnificent taste in music. Straddling…
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It still boggles my mind that Quiet! was in fact crafted by the same artist who sang in the proto-Asian Underground hit “Ever So Lonely“. A severe departure from the proto-Asian Underground Pop she’s known for, Quiet! showed Sheila Chandra working untethered, trying to go beyond the Orientalism of her past work and push it forward in directions that weren’t entirely…
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What a lovely hour of music. What’s else is there to say about Ric Kaestner’s criminally unknown Music For Massage? “an hour of soothing music designed for massage therapy” is what the cassette cover states on the Japanese-influenced woodblock album artwork, for once who am I to disagree? Made up of two cassette sides – one a-side devoted…
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Originally recorded to soundtrack Rentarō Mikuni’s Jury Prize-winning Cannes film festival “Shinran: Path to Purity”, Yas Kaz’s own Shinran/Path To Purity does well to exist on its own, outside the cinema. Taking cues from the original story of Shinran, the Buddhist monk who promoted a very egalitarian method to spirituality/salvation, so does Yas Kaz transform his knowledge of Japanese…
ambient art pop art rock balearic brazilian electro-acoustic england environmental music experimental folk-rock fourth world Funk fusion japan jazz minimalist neo-folk neoclassical new age walearic