neoclassical

Masami Ota x Masumi Takahashi (太田正美 x 高橋真澄): シンフォレスト美瑛・富良野 (Biei-Furano) (1995)

2021/12/17

I hate to say this but this review might be one of the lighter ones. Not because of the album itself – the whole package is truly wonderful (a mix of nostalgia, elegance, and a certain uniqueness, tying quasi-ambient, quasi-neoclassical music with gorgeous photography of Hokkaido) – but because of the lack of information about…
Yuriko Nakamura (中村由利子): Wind And Reflections (風の鏡) (1987)

2021/11/19

It is my hope that more than a few of you out there can truly appreciate the brilliance of pianist Yuriko Nakamura’s debut: Wind And Reflections. Frankly, I expect that something that sounds this painfully out of time requires one to have a certain palette to understand it but if you have it here’s hoping…
Marek Grechuta: Śpiewające Obrazy (1981)

2021/10/26

Certain music and musicians feel like they were born in the wrong era. Usually, for many that time is delineated in years or decades. However, for those that grace us with glimpses of the “Philosopher’s Stone”, like Léo Ferré, Franco Battiato, or Dylan, to name a few, one feels that centuries of time have to…
The Gentle Wind (ザ・ジェントル・ウインド): Tears Of Nature (ティアズ・オブ・ネイチュア) (1989)

2021/08/27

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…
Shakuyaku Trio (芍薬トリオ): Shakuyaku Jidai (芍薬時代) (1988)

2021/05/07

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…
K2 (島健): Daydreamin’ (1987)

2021/02/12

Interior music. It seems that this is it, everyone. We’ve spoken before about Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Soundscape 1: Surround, our introduction to Misawa Home’s foundational environmental music series for Japanese prefabricated houses. You’ve probably heard elsewhere Yutaka Hirose’s entry into the series, a collection of peaceful electroacoustic minimalist pastorales aptly dubbed Soundscape 2: Nova. Then, somewhere,…
Né Ladeiras: Corsária (1988)

2021/01/12

I hate giving you just a taste of anything but Né Ladeiras’s Corsaria has to serve as one today. Ambient and ethereal, Corsaria rightfully belongs in a certain pantheon of Portuguese music, much like the work of Zeca Afonso (and others), trying to bridge that gap between the moorless, Portuguese fado tradition and whatever new…
Michael Jones / David Darling: Amber (1987)

2020/11/10

What a week? Now that we can breathe again, I’d love to share a bit of music that seems to have given me a bit of respite lately. A bit twee for some, a bit too measured for others, for some reason, the pianoscapes of Michael Jones have hit that perfect spot for me lately…
Licia Consoli – Giuseppe Leopizzi: Lighea (1993)

2020/10/20

If you’ve followed this blog for a while now, you’ve probably realized that I make no bones about my love for and promotion of folk music. And, usually, around this time of the year you actually get a bigger peek into this, one of my earliest musical loves, via various albums or mixes I share…
Kazue Sawai (沢井一恵): Eye To Eye (1987)

2020/10/16

Editor’s note: Ayuo was kind enough to email some corrections to my review. I’ve included them inline for readers to take in. It’s never easy to be the first in anything. Kazue Sawai’s whole career is a living testament to this with multiple convictions rendering their verdict on her choices. In 1987, she chose to…