walearic
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Top down, shades on, it’s time to take Nico’s Valerie out for a spin. Featuring the sterling work of twin brothers Mamoru and Shigeru Shimada, Japan’s answer to America’s Alessi Brothers, so too does Valerie inhabit that same wander zone of genre-defying AOR. Not quite City Pop, not strictly Pop either, it shows all the…
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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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For those that don’t believe we can there’s a way to engage with the outside world while stuck inside one’s inner space, Awa Muse‘s second compilation: しおのみち ニの巻 (Shio-No-Michi) Vol.2 proves there are other ways to meet it there.
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First things first: Please go to Noka’s Youtube channel and hit “subscribe” to thank them for sharing this first. None other than sharing other fascinating nuggets of Japanese indie rock, punk, and techno, he made me make a snap decision. In light of all that’s going around us, rather than share another bit of (perhaps)…
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Truth be told: I really had trouble deciding to share this album with you, fair reader. One of my many goals for this blog is to move away from the well-worn stereotype/trope of the “female musician”. However, staring right in front of me (and you now) is exactly what one associates that being by pigheaded…
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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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As long as there is summer and people still want to hear/read about another Hajime Mizoguchi album, I’ll be more than happy to ride on that feeling. Continuing on a very long retrospective on Hajime’s work, see prior posts for his prior work, today we land on another of his wonderfully summer-esque albums — A…
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I think that just about does it. If you had on your bingo card Toshiyuki Honda to complete the Japanese “saxophonist goes Avant Pop” game, you’re the winner now! Joining the likes of Yasuaki Shimizu, Genji Sawai, and Hiroyasu Yaguchi, comes Toshiyuki’s Saxophone Music, another album redefining what is exactly that: music played by saxophonists.…
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A leftfield reimagining of vaunted Afro-Cuban jazz classics, in a new school “futuristic” Japanese Pop style, shouldn’t sound so interesting as it does in Today’s Latin Project. Launched on the demise of one famous group (The Tokyo Cuban Boys) and the rise of one important, new musical voice, Yasuaki Shimizu, you’d expect something titled Today’s…
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My apologies to my less than trusty Google Translation app, but there are only a few things I can describe as legibly belonging in the shared space of Yuki Nakayamate’s Octopussy. Names like Roxy Music, Matia Bazar, August Darnell (as part of Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band and Kid Creole and the Coconuts), and Grace…
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