jazz
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I’m glad we’ve gotten hints of the special work Lee Byung-Woo has done quietly behind the scenes in his native Korea. I wager some of you’ve already heard his music soundtracking Bong Joon-Ho’s brilliant films like The Host and Mother. Somewhere lost to our shores has been Lee Byung-Woo’s earlier trailblazing career. 1989’s 1집 –…
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Take a look at the image above. What you see is an image of a creature belonging to the Daphnia genus. Entirely microscopic in size, a plankton that’s aquatic in nature, and unable to move (or to put it precisely: float) without something else propelling it along — much like certain jellyfish — it’s both…
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And now some jazz… up next on my ongoing quest to lose half my audience: Yoshio Ohtomo Quartet’s As A Child. I kid, of course. Classifying this under jazz is like classifying Dylan’s latest masterpiece “Murder Most Foul” as rock ‘n’ roll or the multi-layered yeoman tomes of the late John Prine as folk. It’s…
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Isn’t it wonderful when you can skip just whole bits of history and get to the pertinent parts? Such is the case with Franco Mussida’s Racconti Della Tenda Rossa (or Tales Of The Red Curtain), made by someone who most of you may already know as the founding member and lead guitarist (and sometimes vocalist)…
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Pardon me a bit today, for there is a whole lot to unpack behind this work Flesh & Bone’s Skeleton Woman. So, I’ll have to parse things out just a bit. First, I’ll classify this release under the “fourth world” banner but still feel that’s not quite doing justice to it. Part jazz, part ambient,…
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It’s perhaps uncommon knowledge that the best marriages (and relationships) are those comprised of two individuals coming together not in spite of their differences but because of their differences. One can clearly hear this in practice in the nearly telepathic playing of Osaka Japanese New Age guitar duo, Gontiti. In the past I’ve written a…
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Truth be told, few records in my collection sound like Esther Ofarim’s Complicated Ladies. Well, truth be told, few albums will ever sound like it either…in anyone’s collection. A mixture of Israeli melismatic jazz with German liedermacher wouldn’t sound too out of the ordinary (at least in some circles). However, let’s say someone decided to…
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The changing of decades always seem to introduce truly amazing albums that fall through the cracks. Be it because they are caught in between eras. Be it because they’re simply made outside of any prevailing trend. These albums, unfortunately, reveal their true brilliance (sometimes) only in hindsight. Recently, I’ve had that aha! moment with Clevedon…
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Don’t you just hate the holidays? Don’t answer that. If anything this time of the year teaches us is that we need to find ways to forgive and move forward. Don’t you just hate Christmas music? Don’t answer that. I used to. Now, I’ve seen the light (so to speak). Perhaps this whole month I’ve…
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Winter heat from an unlikely source. Perhaps I’m showing my bias as a violinist, but I have to share another of my favorite (sadly unknown) releases from my fellow brethren. Another wonderful cross-thatched affair of fourth world and new age grooves not from the west but this time from Japan’s other uber-talented, and quite prolific,…
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