minimal

  • I’ve got to come clean: I’m one of those people that loves to wake up early. I feel that the hours of dawn reveal something precious that’s appreciated by relative few. It’s minutes and moments of atmospheric, environmental drama outside one’s window. Perhaps, an especially jaw-dropping sunrise. Perhaps, bird and insect song that’s less obstructed…

  • Illustration by Laura Gomez I think, no undertaking is ever as enriching if isn’t done with a purpose in mind. For myself, trying to understand and (most importantly) differentiate what makes Japanese Ambient music different than other ways to music led me to an idea. It’s one that I thank NTS for giving me a…

  • A mix of white and black. A mix of religion and spirituality. A mix of cultures, class, and race. Brazilian Bahian musical group Grupo Zambo does its best to look beyond miscegenation, to really get to the root of Brazilian musical folklore and experimentation. Bahia, Grupo Zambo, quite rightfully, holds a mystical memory to anyone…

  • Entirely slept-on, to the point that it still boggles my mind how with all the recent reissues and rediscoveries of artists like Telex, Alec Mansion, Li Garattoni, and Linda DiFranco – artists who skirted the line of Balearic, electro-pop, post-disco, and boogie – there hasn’t been room for someone to be woke enough to Montpellier’s…

  • These are the things that surprise sometimes. I went into researching some background story behind Hajime Mizoguchi’s deeply affecting Halfinch Dessert and wound up uncovering that their is some meaning behind this album. Hajime Mizoguchi was born and raised in Tokyo. By the age of eleven he had chosen to educate himself in the ways…

  • There is a time in any good musician’s life when they absolutely nail down whatever they had to place. Akira Ito, one time keyboardist for influential Japanese psych rock outfit The Far East Band, could have stayed with that group rehashing “out there” musical troupes – variations on psychedelia with The FABs or Kitaro-like, Jean-Michel…

  • Heavy, shamanic, tectonic Fourth World music from French-American composer, of Cherokee descent, Steve Shehan. Primarily a percussionist, Steve developed his own improvisational recording method to be able to capture the moody, spiritual, polyrhythmic music of his favorite Indonesian music tradition, working to translate it to modern environs and add other non-Western influences from the Middle…

  • Everytime I put on Syoko’s Soil I have to do a double-take. Seriously? The music coming out of my headphones right now was made by the same person who created the My Neighbor Totoro soundtrack and Kichijoutennyo. Sonically, I can see the connection to the latter but stretching the conceit to his countless Miyazaki soundtracks seems to question his elasticity…

  • eco1

    Deep, deep, earth music from Tsutomu Ōhashi and the Geinoh Yamashirogumi crew. A macrosymphony composed for the International Garden and Greenery Exposition in Osaka, Japan, 1990, Ecophony Gaia, was supposed to be the stunning, aural centerpiece for a light and water performance system echoing the sentiment of the venue: “Harmonious Coexistence of Nature and Mankind.”

  • urban_dance

    Even for Haruomi Hosono, Urban Dance is a rare bird. Let me step back. After listening to Friends of Earth and Love, Peace, and Trance I may be incorrect. Urban Dance’s self-titled debut is a rare bird for Japanese electronic music. Produced by Haruomi Hosono, Urban Dance was the rare slice of Japanese music that drew…

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