fourth world
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When I think of summer, when I think of the vibrancy of this season, I think of albums like the Ten Plants series, spearheaded by video game composers Nobuo Uematsu and Toshiyuki Sasagawa.
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While this blog may seem like it looks backward, it is actually in service of looking forward. I firmly believe that exploring new territory sometimes requires circling back to forgotten places. Right now, I’m exploring where Japanese ambient music left off after its early, pioneering “environmental and healing” period with artists like Hiroshi Yoshimura, Toshifumi…
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If you’re like me, sometimes all it takes is one listen to feel that a certain album or artist should have made a bigger mark. When I listen to Yow Okazaki’s Damage, with its fusion of hip-hop, techno, ambient and French Pop-influenced acid jazz, I think: now here’s music that merits a certain introduction.
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Trance Nature Sounds. I feel like anything I say about Hariyo Remixe’s might not do justice to the music as clearly as what you see on its album cover.
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The chirp of crickets, a babbling brook, the melodies of a songbird, certain things trigger a sense of new life or of spring settling in. I say this because I feel the same way about Jimi Chen’s Discovering Arts Behind The Mountains 發現後山的藝術, his “character music” soundtrack for a documentary of the same name (which…
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If you can, allow me one more diversion for the year. In my last post, I finally found words to describe what was my album of the year for 2022. Now I’m cycling back to an album that truly lingered in my headspace just as long this past year, 2023. It’s an album marked by…
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As a writer, I try to remain as objective as possible and not inject too much of myself into what I review. Yet, as we all know, it’s impossible to completely divorce yourself from a reality: music hits differently. How any piece of music affects you has to be informed by the contours that shape…
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As I write this post, my mind goes back to the ideas posited in Claire Dederer’s new book, “Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma”. I keep thinking: to what degree do I promote or endorse the work of Miguel Bosé? At this moment in time, I can’t escape that I vehemently disagree with his most current views…
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First off: a huge tip of my hat to fellow F/S blog reader, Victor Hsu Jui-Ting, for cluing me to today’s album a good while ago. If you know me, you know that video games, anime, and manga are some of the artforms I’m the least versed about and a lot of quality anything is…
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No joke, I too sometimes feel puzzled as you might be with what gets shared on this blog. On a regular day, I’d skirt around sharing something like Thomas Diethelm and Santino Famulari’s Diethelm/Famulari. It could be because there’s little to no information about the musicians…a major reason I hold back, often. It could also…
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