japan
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Who says you need a trip out to the country to get into the spirit of Akira Inoue’s Anne: Dreaming an Island (The Light and Wind of Prince Edward Island) 夢みるアンの島 ～プリンス・エドワード島の光と風～? When I speak of road-tripping records, I speak of records just like this one, one that accepts all the conceits of the “road”…
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You know, it goes without saying that a lot of what I try to do on the blog is simply fill in the blanks. In the case of The Gentle Wind’s Tears Of Nature, you could say the blanks are as important as the known knowns. First of all, great thanks go out to YouTube…
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It’s rare to find someone bridging the gap between Jethro Tull, Marc Bolan’s T-Rex, The Orb, and Toumani Diabate, but it seems this world can support only one Lion Merry. Simply scroll down to the bottom of this post, past the download link, and know that I could have easily gone into multiple rows to…
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And now: more of something I wish there was more history to share about — Lotus Kasumi Experience. It’s that kind of a week. Losing and then regaining an old hard drive — thanks, again, everyone! — sometimes yields unexpected surprises. Case in point, the album listed in the headline.
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Forgive me for burying the lede but I have to go back to Yassue. For all of those that thought Yassue’s story ended on A Fine Day…I have to share a wonderful coda to that story. A Cosmic Pandora, if you will. Much like Yumiko Morioka’s MIOS, it was their little-known sophomore album that proved…
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Ambient. New Age. Japan. The tags almost write the post itself, right? Yet, we still have to talk about this intriguing turn by Akira Mitake. Akira Mitake’s Himawari (or Sunflower) was released in 1987 as a complement to, don’t quote me on this: NHK’s 8-part documentary, 日本～その心とかたち～, Japan – Its Heart and Shape, a historical…
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The Universe. It’s not often one turns on an instrument and gets presented with such a thing. Yet, the [Universe] was the sound patch introducing you to the world of Korg’s M1, the first of its kind, a music workstation that gave you what seemed like a universe of sounds in one keyboard. Korg’s M1…
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What is a protest song? Hopefully, as our musical tastes have evolved, one can recognize how the best protest songs are those that abandon any form of sloganeering for something far more personal and in many ways more multi-layered. Moshiri’s Kamuychikap (God’s Bird) isn’t ethnic music. It’s not folk music or traditional song. Moshiri’s Kamuychikap…
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Trigger warning: “Good morning. It’s 5 o’clock, from the J-WAVE Singin’ Clock…” J-WAVE 時報コレクション My apologies to all of you who’ve grown up in Tokyo, waking up to their radio alarm blasting out J-WAVE 81.3 FM’s ultra-cozy, “singing” time call signal. However, if it wasn’t for Tokyo’s “classic hits” radio station we wouldn’t have the…
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Let’s have a conversation about elegance. What is elegant? The textbook definition of this term seems to strike at two different ideas. One is that something that is elegant is something that is marked by dignity, grace, and simple beauty. The other definition posits that we are elegant (or something is) due to our high…
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