art rock

  • How many intersectional studies can one make? Yes, all of them, it seems for Jin De-zhe. It’s not often you get to write about a Chinese physicist of ethnic Korean descent who moonlights in making gorgeous ambient folk music recorded in Beijing sung in Cantonese Mandarin (editor’s note: sorry for the mix-up) for the Hong…

  • It’s rare to find someone bridging the gap between Jethro Tull, Marc Bolan’s T-Rex, The Orb, and Toumani Diabate, but it seems this world can support only one Lion Merry. Simply scroll down to the bottom of this post, past the download link, and know that I could have easily gone into multiple rows to…

  • Just more music for “in between seasons”. What else can you say to describe the latter-day work of, sadly, now defunct, Portuguese sophisticated pop group, Ban? As I put on their Mundo de Aventuras it’s not hard to have your mind race back to more naive times when certain love songs spoke to youthful measures…

  • It goes without saying that this is the silly season for me. While I would like to drop reams upon reams of knowledge on the ins and outs of Ms. Mio Takaki and her New-Tant, unfortunately, I have less time than normal to do so but I’ll do my best. As for those who appreciate…

  • As I grow older, I grow increasingly dumbfounded. There’s absolutely no reason Michel Lemieux shouldn’t be a household name now. Here I am looking at a video performance from his salad days and I see a superstar. Much like Peter Gabriel and Laurie Anderson, who he is both compared to in his Wikipedia entry, so…

  • One of my worst kept secrets is my love for Diana Pequeno’s Mistérios. It’s no mystery that it hits all the points I love about music: it’s dreamy, it’s complex but easy going, it’s the product of an artist going out on a limb (in a way most wouldn’t expect). Most importantly, the reason Mistérios…

  • For such a short solo career Gianni Nocenzi’s work is quite mercurial. In the span of two albums, recorded five years apart, this giant of Italian prog released music that sounded like little else he’d ever do. Most importantly, here, in 1993’s Soft Songs he tries to cross a bridge few would actually venture to…

  • Let’s have a talk about cancel culture. I refuse to endorse any images that will promote racism of any kind. We punch up, not down, here. It’s for that reason I have to confront legitimately racist works, like the comics and anime behind Open Sesame’s! Chocolate Panic, with some modicum of introspection. Although the music…

  • Certain albums just sound special from the get-go. When I put on Ayuo Takahashi’s Nova Carmina instantly I hear something that takes me back. It’s something quite simple: Ayuo’s violin playing streaks of glissando over something he wrote for Aideen Morgan. It’s poetry speaks of a rebirth of sorts, of its narrator finding in the…

  • Now, where did we leave off? Still holding on to bits of uncertainty, it seems. And like most of our far away islands, the most distant are the ones of our creation. Then, if all of that’s the case, in 1985, Björn seemed to be pretty much on his own trip. That’s where we pick…

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