healing music

Toshiya Sukegawa (助川敏弥): Bioçic Music – Astrology (バイオシック・ミュージック「星座」) (1993)

2020/04/17

Let’s take what we can from the late Toshiya Sukegawa’s Bioçic Music – Astrology. Another album in the little understood (or heard) environmental music genre, this album tries to add its own notch to a new totem other composers experimented with in Japan around this period. Graceful, meditative, and quite quiet it was meant to…
Dream Dolphin (ドリームドルフィン): Atmospheric Healing (1996)

2020/04/10

Sometimes, I feel like I may lead you even further down rabbit holes I’ve fallen into. Case in point: Dream Dolphin’s Atmospheric Healing. Released in 1996, on Harry Hosono’s FOA Records label, Atmospheric Healing began to stretch the label’s original concept of releasing “folk-oriented art” music into something they’d dub the “force of ambient”. Impossible…
Raffaele Serra: Musiche Per Il Cuore E La Memoria – Music For The Heart And The Memory (1991)

2020/03/17

With all that’s going on in our world, I thought it would be important to share something that both reminds us of the healing power of music and of a country that is desperately suffering through its crisis. Originally created for Italy’s intriguing healing music label, Ludi Sounds, Raffaelle Serra’s Musiche Per Il Cuore E…
Mix: 35. Japanese Healing Music

2019/12/06

Certain things aren’t lost on me. Whenever I look at my time slot at LYL Radio I feel a sense of responsibility. Each month on Wednesday, I end their programming day. For some, it’s 11 PM Paris time. While for others (like myself) it’s 4 PM Central Standard time. While one part of the world…
Shiho Yabuki (矢吹紫帆): New Meditation (1990)

2019/11/22

Let’s hope this post posits something with clarity. You see, yours truly, has been mightily under the weather this week and propping myself up to put words on screen has been (equally) that much of a struggle. Thankfully, this week, Shiho Yabuki’s New Meditation the subject of this post, has provided perfect backgrounding music to…
Hiroki Miyano (宮野弘紀): D / I/ V /E /R /G /E (分岐点) (1988)

2019/09/20

And now some jazz… *Quietly watches all my readers’ eyes glaze over*. For those who can appreciate the bigger “jazz” picture, here’s Hiroki Miyano’s D / I/ V /E /R /G /E. Showcasing Hiroki Miyano’s wonderfully elegant guitar playing, D / I/ V /E /R /G /E takes great pains not to rock the boat…
Andreas von Wangenheim: Orlando – 12 Poems For Guitar & Ensemble (1989)

2019/09/17

We all have our palette cleansers. For me, musically, it’s “acoustic” music. I know I have a large readership that appreciates the more electronic, out there, musical selections…but truth be told, when I’m listening to music for relaxation I prefer far more “simple” music. That’s not to say that we should think of simply-sounding music…
Satoshi Sumitani (住谷智): 思議の森～Forest Marvelously～ (1986)

2019/08/30

We’re back in the thick of it. Divining that perfect balance of nature and melody, Satoshi Sumitani now joins us in this long journey through Japanese environmental music. Part of CBS/Sony’s quite forward-thinking environmental music imprint, Sound Forest, 不思議の森～Forest Marvelously～ (or Fushigi no mori, Mysterious Forest) took ideas that were taking root in Japan’s New…
Hiroya Minakuchi + Missing Link (水口博也): Dolphin (1993)

2019/08/02

There’s a moment in Hiroya Minakuchi + Missing Link’s Dolphin that never ceases to take my breath away: a minute into “The Cradle Of The Ocean”, the sound of actual dolphin speech mingles with a plaintive piano melody to deliver a sublime aquatic ballad that exudes what I think is perfect example of “womb music”.…
Ken-Ichiro Isoda (磯田健一郎): ナチュラル・トリップマジエルの星 (1990)

2019/01/18

Someone’s going to look back at this post and wonder: “why the hell did this guy write so much about what amounts to be adult lullaby music”. Well, stopping “theoretical person” in their track, I do so because this kind of music is unlike much else you’ll hear today. Ken-Ichiro Isoda’s ナチュラル・トリップマジエルの星, which (don’t…