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  • Is it wrong to feel nostalgia for a past you never lived through? With the rise of City Pop and other genres or media evoking some sort of hauntology, I keep trying to purposefully separate myself from being too backwards-looking, for fear of running the risk of falling through a kitsch trap many fall in.…

  • “Prince.” Now with that out of the way, can I focus on what I think is one of J-Soul’s least heralded and easily most slept-on albums: Shinji Harada’s Doing Wonders (ドゥーイング・ワンダース)? Before you think that all this blog likes to share is background music for taking a nap or studying, I’d like to let you…

  • Just something for the lovers out there: Cindy’s exceptional J-Soul heavy, Angel Touch. Perfectly distilling that gorgeous in between period of the early ‘90s r&b scene, it can’t help but be a tad dated but also more than a tad timeless and (surprisingly) au courant. For those who need a bit of comfort and joy,…

  • 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…

  • What does one do when one can’t find answers themselves? You look for help. And so recently, one Coste Apetrea carved out some time out of his day to help yours truly try to get some semblance of history behind the late Björn Holm. For a long time I put aside writing about Björn, for…

  • Let’s revisit one of my favorite topics: when prog goes pop. In a way, it should inform today’s discussion on Anthony Phillips’ Invisible Men. You see, not so many moons ago I dedicated a mix to one Peter Bardens, ex-Camel and Caravan keyboardist who quietly created intriguing “prog”-minded pop music. It’s a sound that I…

  • FAD: FAD! (1981)

    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)…

  • And now for some early magic from notable J-Pop producer and songwriter Keiichi Tomita aka Tomita Lab. Complete Samples by KEDGE, for all intents and purposes, is the work of one mind: Keiichi’s. A superbly fun and surprisingly complex work, it reminds me of some of the best stuff from Japan’s earlier City Pop and…

  • We could only be so lucky to age as well as EG and Alice’s 24 Years Of Hunger has. Now, it seems, I have to be the next one carrying the torch forward to promote this forgotten Pop masterpiece. In 1991, it was an unlikely blip on England’s music radar, appearing in a bright flash,…

  • First, a huge thanks to Kyle for sharing this wonderful album with me. Too smooth for a Disco Tehran party he dj’ed, I can understand why he thought its sound might be appreciated elsewhere. From the first moment you put on Ziad Rahbani’s Houdou Nisbi (زياد الرحباني) you feel an instant pull that just floors…

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