japan
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Totem proves there’s more than one genius behind the Shimizu family tree. Rightfully, it gives you a peek into the deeply brilliant leftfield ideas of Mieko Shimizu, joining brother Yasuaki Shimizu as another unique branch from that musical lineage. Finding herself in the UK, in 1988, Mieko signed with Chris Cutler’s (of Henry Cow), of…
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Let’s do things recursively. Mekong Zoo’s Minimal Dance is exactly as its written — dance music with minimal gestures. Minimal Dance is the unlikely collaboration between two quietly pioneering Japanese female musicians and another intriguing one from England. A hybrid mix of world music, jazz, ambient, neoclassical, and burgeoning techno, it’s piece together all these…
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Oh, that healing feeling. Heaven knows I’ve been needing it more than usual, lately. Thankfully, I’ve had just the prescription for when life gives you some sour as hell lemons: Keita’s Healing Feeling. All is right in the world, for just 60 minutes, when I fire up the old laptop and hear Keita pitter-pattering about.…
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Faceless and nameless, but not without their charms. Library by Exotics is a fantastically twisted album that orbits between the worlds of power pop and electronic mutant funk. You’d think such a one-off would come out of nowhere, but there were seeds of who the Exotics were (and what they aimed to do) elsewhere.
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How do we get beyond the “fourth world” ideas thought of by early progenitors of it, like Eno and Jon Hassell? We begin by seeing it, hearing it, through the eyes/ears of those who felt a need to connect to other traditions as it could form part of their own. The classic idea was to…
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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…
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This next one, for me, has been pretty special ever since I received it. It took me a while to pinpoint why exactly I loved Tomoyuki Asakawa’s Relaxation Music For Harp And Wave. Everytime I put it on bits and pieces of familiarity crept into my subconscious. I kept thinking the whole time: “I’ve heard…
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I have a confession to make: I didn’t quite “get” Criola’s Winter Songbook, for a long time. Looking back, though, this season, I’ve been blessed with many things in life and one of them has been running this blog. Never have I been so inspired, influenced, and devoted to maintain this running conversation with people…
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There’s a palpable meditation hovering around Lyu Hong-Jun’s masterwork 大地の詩, otherwise known as “Songs Of The Earth” or “Earth Songs”. Recorded for pioneering Japanese prefab home maker Misawa Home, landing place of equally pioneering musical works by Hiroshi Yoshimura and Yutaka Hirose, this album was supposed to provide another soundtrack to the unique, holistic experience they were selling. It’s…
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