fourth world
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I’ve always had a belief: it’s that you can really tell a lot about a person by what they listen to, how they create, or what inspires them to create. As I read interviews with today’s focus, Hajime Mizoguchi, I sense that his music speaks volume of the person he is. Elegant, graceful, yet uniquely…
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You know, sometimes the struggle is simply trying to quantify how unique something is. I’ve been listening to Liu Xing’s 無所事 (To Do Nothing) for more than a while now and every time I try to find an angle to share it on the site, I backtrack and hold off (thinking I’ll do it and…
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‘Tokiko Kato’ – now that’s a name. A giant of Japanese folk music, it was Tokiko who in many ways was at the vanguard, transforming Shōwa era traditional ideas into more nebulous regions throughout her musical career. But what do you say when, supposedly, such an artist ages out of innovating? Do you put their…
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In this day and age, when there’s no lack of opinions, I go back to a few personal heroes. When I think about putting yourself out there, to think beyond borders and history, my mind goes back to Patty Pravo. One always goes back and wonders: What was going on in her mind when she…
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Don’t ask me why but it seems that jewelry companies always find a way to leverage their buying power to commission others to create some of the most interesting music-related value propositions. In plain speak: I’m holding an album, 4℃’s Christmas Suite, given as a holiday gift to (what I imagine) were there well-to-do customers,…
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Recently, while dabbling in the world of wine reviews, I’ve been ruminating on a term that I believe would be well-adapted for use in the music criticism realm: QPR. “QPR”, or quality-to-price-ratio, is a term used by wine aficionados to denote how much bang for your buck inexpensive wines can provide. While it’s awfully rich…
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How many intersectional studies can one make? Yes, all of them, it seems for Jin De-zhe. It’s not often you get to write about a Chinese physicist of ethnic Korean descent who moonlights in making gorgeous ambient folk music recorded in Beijing sung in Cantonese Mandarin (editor’s note: sorry for the mix-up) for the Hong…
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God sure does move in mysterious ways. Listening to Phil Keaggy’s The Wind And Wheat is a fitting testament to that. Only in our realm can an autodidact, Christian musician from Youngstown, Ohio, who only has the faculty of nine of his ten fingers, be more than just an unsung guitar hero (perhaps the “greatest”…
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What exactly is darkness? Is it a sensation, a color, or a feeling? It’s something I kept asking myself for my recent Halloween-inspired mix for LYL Radio. Why do certain tracks or artists fail to miss the mark on what I feel it is?
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When, or if, someone would ask me what kind of album I think perfectly encapsulates the promise of ‘80s music in Japan, I’d say look no further than Macoto Tezka Presents Reiko Okano’s Fancy Dance (ファンシイダンス). As before, I’ll be the first to raise my hand and state: “If you’re looking for someone who is…
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