new age
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Let’s try a little tenderness from Mitsuru Sawamura, otherwise known as Mich Live, one-time member of Japanese band Interior (with whom he wrote songs like “Luft” and “Park“) and brilliant session musician for others like Yukihiro Takahashi, Hajime Tachibana, Pierre Barouh, and Mari Iijima. In 1988, Mitsuru released under the Newsic label (home of Yoshio Ojima) something that straddles…
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I’m truly thankful I live in a world where circumstances led Londoner Morgan Fisher to visit Japan, fall in love with country, and proceed to sell nearly all of his life’s work to make his living there. Some would say it was a foolhardy move but it’s a move that proved essential to his reinvention…
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Simply sublime. What else can you say? From the man who literally wrote the definitive word on Flamenco technique, comes a work showing the full expanse of his personal creative method. Juan Martin is one of the most iconic names in Nuevo Flamenco. Somewhere, down the line, his lifelong interest in art and painting (owing a…
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In a way, everything you do circles back to where one comes from. All my life, somehow, I felt my own lineage and ancestry steeped in Mexico was some kind of relic of the past. That too many other cultures had managed to strive for something new and exciting, while my own remain stagnant. When NTS asked me to give…
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I am you. You are me, Coste Apetrea Airborne cover man. I feel you, ADIDAS sweatpants-tucked-in-full-length-fishing boots man. I get you, oversized-cardigan-above-open-buttoned-linen-shirted-friend. I know you, man trapped in between seasons dude. Is it warm enough to put away winter’s festoons and enjoy warmer moods with cooler duds? Your picture doesn’t tell me the full story.
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Every time I revisit Eblen Macari’s landmark release, Música Para Planetarios, I find something different and special about it. At times, it’s finding pride that something like this exist where one’s own Mexican culture doesn’t need to be negated/subjugated to create something spectacularly pioneering. Other times, it’s when I sit back and identify cultural cues and traditions inherent in…
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Sun-lit, rainbow music for respite after rainy days. That’s how I would describe Alap Jetzer’s largely acoustic renditions of Hindu guru Sri Chinmoy’s compositions. Attracted to the same devotional spiritual path that struck other musicians like Pete Townshend, Carlos Santana, Narada Michael Walden, and Roberta Flack, so was this young Swiss instrument maker and multi-instrumentalist…
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New age records shouldn’t sound (or look!) as fun as German Büdi Siebert’s Hmm…, but I wager no one ever asked Büdi where his records should be classified. If I could compare him to anyone, it would most likely be Don Cherry, a similar artist who has no specific style but a magnificent taste in music. Straddling…
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It still boggles my mind that Quiet! was in fact crafted by the same artist who sang in the proto-Asian Underground hit “Ever So Lonely“. A severe departure from the proto-Asian Underground Pop she’s known for, Quiet! showed Sheila Chandra working untethered, trying to go beyond the Orientalism of her past work and push it forward in directions that weren’t entirely…
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What a lovely hour of music. What’s else is there to say about Ric Kaestner’s criminally unknown Music For Massage? “an hour of soothing music designed for massage therapy” is what the cassette cover states on the Japanese-influenced woodblock album artwork, for once who am I to disagree? Made up of two cassette sides – one a-side devoted…
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