jazz
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Brace yourselves, let’s see how far I can take this review of Javier Zuazu’s Cuaderno De Invierno (or A Winter Journal). What was this album? 50-odd minutes of Spanish New Age that hovers from impressionistic piano-led instrumentals and wonderfully, minimal, warm and tender ambient mood music. Throw in one gorgeous ballad and once again, I’m…
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Be honest. How many of you know someone (or are friends or acquaintances) with a certain somebody that in the way they act, the way they dress or think, seem not of this era? I keep thinking of this thought when I go back to Toshihiro Nakanishi’s music and this selection: You Make Me Blue.…
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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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♫♩♩♪♫?…just more of that hammock music. You know me, if you’ve followed this site for a while, you’re probably aware by now how this is the time of the year I dedicate to promoting my favorite easy-going music. Usually instrumental, completely breezy and tropical, it follows a trend I believe in. It’s about thinking of…
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It’s easy to feel untethered when you’re listening to Chen Guoping’s (aka John Chen) Songs From Within (心意). Oscillating across various styles — jazz, neoclassical, ambient, traditional, and New Age — the album itself never feels anchored to any specific border. The main protagonist in this collection, John Chen’s fingerpicking, acts like a liaison speaking…
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How many of you love being outdoors? Even if it’s just me, I can completely empathize with the mindset being explored by Tatsuya Koumazaki and Febian Reza Pane’s「森の組曲」 / “Forest” Suite. Speaking for myself, nothing feels more refreshing and in a way meditative than walking around some greenery early in the morning. Experiencing the sights,…
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Color me “stumped”. My apologies to Chris, who graciously shared Yon Seok-Won’s 空 (Space & Silence) with me. I did my best to piece together some kind or type of background for this amazing Korean ambient album but ran into an equally large gulf in history. It shouldn’t end this way, of course. Much like…
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Bobby McFerrin & Jack Nicholson: How The Rhinoceros Got His Skin & How The Camel Got His Hump (1987)
This one is for the young or those young at heart. Yes, your eyes aren’t deceiving you: Bobby McFerrin and Jack Nicholson. Sometime long ago, in our weird, sometimes, just so fucked up world, the joy of our world descended upon us, bringing to us this hypnotic, decidedly sublime emotional spiritual fusion (jazz?) record dubbed…
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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…
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First and foremost, let me start with an apology. It might be that my review of Joseph Chan Wing Leung’s work and his career might span longer (or shorter) than the actual album, Milk Of Love (母愛), you’ll hear today. Though, in around 20 minutes you’ll get a taste on this album of the esoteric…
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