fourth world
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What better way to ease into spring than with an album that exemplifies that grand idea we call “rebirth”? Rebirth, more often than not, is defined by what one lets go in order to awaken something entirely different. And in the case of Mayumi Itoh, it’s about completely putting to bed a certain past so…
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I always like to look back and rediscover where I first encountered some of the guests I’ve invited to the blog. I still can’t believe it’s been a bit over eight years since I first came across mvns.
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You know, for me, sometimes the most fascinating thing about interviews like these with Dream Dolphin is discovering just how much I don’t know.
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One of my favorite things to discover and hear in music is how ideas translate across genres and borders. Listening to Midori’s Vortex Symphony, I get the sense that they share a similar spirit of discovery. Yes, this is “dream pop,” but it isn’t the dream pop we usually imagine – it’s the kind that…
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Maybe it’s something about myself, but I tend to feel inspired by the music of those who aren’t necessarily solely inspired by music itself. As I listen to Yasushi Egami’s Arcars – The Surface of Muclique, I get the sense that something deeper is at play–just how important texture is to any artform.
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I can’t help but smile a little when I hear how brazenly Yuji Sugiyama begins what would become his sole release under the name Logik Freaks. On 1995’s Temptations of Logik Freaks – One Fine Day, the opening track, “Tekno Prisoner/Preacher,” starts as a hypnotic piece of Japanese ambient techno before being yanked out of…
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The more I curate mixes or tumble down that wormhole called “discovering new music,” the more I find myself questioning how we categorize things. For me, it’s all circling back to how one listens to music.
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Don’t you just love listening to something that isn’t easily categorized? When I listen to Mikihiko Matsumiya’s 1994 debut, Mu-Myou (無明), I spend a moment trying to figure out what kind of music I’d like it to be, only to find that music has a right to remain mysterious and this haunting, lovely, album is…
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It’s not often I revisit works from artists I’ve already written about, but when I do, it’s because these other works shed light on a new dimension of their creativity. In today’s case, few artists reveal as many fantastic—and drastic—sides as Naoko Kawai through her work as The Gentle Wind.
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Life is something, right? When I conceived of my latest mix for my LYL Radio show, I wanted to capture a certain spirit: that of gently percolating music that bubbles at the edges but never quite reaches a boiling point. My thought was, “On certain trying days, we all need music that consoles us, that…
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