fourth world
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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…
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Certain music and musicians feel like they were born in the wrong era. Usually, for many that time is delineated in years or decades. However, for those that grace us with glimpses of the “Philosopher’s Stone”, like Léo Ferré, Franco Battiato, or Dylan, to name a few, one feels that centuries of time have to…
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Sometimes telling the story of something feels like it won’t match the quality of the source material. In my case, its detailing the music and history behind 中國經典名著電影音樂2: 怨女 (otherwise known as the “Rouge Of The North” soundtrack) without falling prey to the trappings of Orientalism. Ambient, mysterious, and wickedly incisive, it’s this work by…
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Doesn’t it always seem like fall weather brings along autumnal feelings? Nothing speaks to this preternatural connection to our environment quite like art, and in our case: music. You see, in my latest mix for LYL Radio I was inspired quite directly by the song and words of Ayuo Takahashi’s “Across The Seasons”.
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“I have aimed at creating with my work, a music at one with nature. Nature is melodic within itself, without abstaining from true harmony. Everything is sound. Everything is music.” — Carlos Pacini Aires da Silva Couldn’t have said it better myself.
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