new age
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So very lovely. Forgive me if some of you are expecting something more experimental, electronic, or whatever else now. Me, I just want something like this. What is this? It’s the beginning of Ryokyu Endo’s sublime form of Japanese New Age music. In 1994, Ryokyu Endo’s Song Of Pure Land, or The Song Of Pure…
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“Endlessly moving, always alive” no better words can describe this album than Windsor Riley’s own. There’s no way around it, The Move Of Life sounds lame on paper. A late ‘80s release, on another nameless record label, trying to peddle harmless instrumental music that would be at home on the Weather Channel or your local dentist…
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Streams of understanding, via spiritual land bridges, or how a Navajo-Ute found a musical connection with Japanese sonorities/tradition. Somehow, I feel a sense of myself in this music. The first time I heard of Island Of Bows by R. Carlos Nakai (with the Wind Travelin’ Band, Shonosuke Ohkura, and Oki Kano) I was struck by…
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Illustration by Laura Gomez By fits and starts I struggled, for some reason, to create this latest mix for NTS. I had so many ideas. Scrapping them one by one, until I settled on something. “Fire”, this element could mean so many things. I wanted it to mean one thing: breath.
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I’m afraid people might get the wrong impression when they listen to the opening track from Michiko Akao’s Yokobue. What’s there to say about “般若波羅蜜多 – Prajna Paramita”? Manning the iconic transverse flute of Japan, the yokobue, Michiko creates a dark jazz funk piece that somehow manages to mix a vocoder in, in a way…
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Trying to revisit something I wrote about and remember quite vividly, at the time I wrote it, presents two opportunities: the first is to reassess why and how I got into that piece of music. The second opportunity presented by revisiting the past, is whether time has added a fresher perspective since then. When Sifted…
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Certain albums linger in your mind for certain reasons. Tôsha Suihô’s 四季の笛 (Die Vier Jahreszeiten In Kyoto) or Four Seasons In Kyoto is one that I can never forget. The premise for its creation was simple: master flautist Tôsha Suihô travels to various sites in Kyoto and records himself performing within the environment he’s in. What happens, though, is…
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Illustration by Laura Gomez What is “earth”? This element we can use all our senses to comprehend, means more than just that. For the second part of my series with NTS, I imagine I had an easier task imagining it musically, than “earth” illustrator Laura Gomez had to capture its spirit visually. How do you hear…
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One of my favorite instrumental albums needs a bit of backstory. First of all, Satsuki Shibano’s Rendez-vous is not entirely a work of hers. Be that as it may, it’s entirely her own vision you see rework French neo-impressionist composer Pascal Comelade’s prior oeuvre into something far more intriguing. Joined by Yoshio Ojima, and released…
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How many second acts can one artist get? Franco Battiato might already be in his 10th or more. At the time of this release, 1995, Franco was a 50 year old man — keep that in mind. Unworried by what was out there, unhurried to prove anything, Franco Battiato (once again) came out of nowhere…
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