minimalist

  • 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…

  • How long can you hold on to a secret? Two years, that’s how long I’ve been holding off on sharing Fred Simon and Liz Cifani’s masterful Time And The River, another in a series of quite autumnal, pastoral, ambient/New Age records that speak to some kind of not-so-profoundly “American” universality. “How come? And how so?”…

  • To be completely honest with you, I’m still struggling to assess how to introduce you to Goffredo Haus’s Musiche Per Poche Parti. For many it will easily wear the crown of minimalism and experimental music. For others, who can get past its very silicon-based creation, it might speak to a fourth wave of electro-acoustic music…

  • Talk about being in the right place and at the right time. Normally, I’m not blessed with great timing but I consider myself fortunate to reach Randy Honea when he had his last copy of Still Life. Now sitting in front of me, in real life, was this, his album — a heady, moving mix…

  • With all that’s going on in our world, I thought it would be important to share something that both reminds us of the healing power of music and of a country that is desperately suffering through its crisis. Originally created for Italy’s intriguing healing music label, Ludi Sounds, Raffaelle Serra’s Musiche Per Il Cuore E…

  • Can you feel it? It seems like we’re getting there. Not quite Spring but really not winter anymore. This is the time of the year where we’re in between seasons. This is the time of the year when Simon Stockhausen’s Floating Free makes the most sense to share. Hovering around the meditative, rhythmic minimalism of…

  • The changing of decades always seem to introduce truly amazing albums that fall through the cracks. Be it because they are caught in between eras. Be it because they’re simply made outside of any prevailing trend. These albums, unfortunately, reveal their true brilliance (sometimes) only in hindsight. Recently, I’ve had that aha! moment with Clevedon…

  • Don’t you just hate the holidays? Don’t answer that. If anything this time of the year teaches us is that we need to find ways to forgive and move forward. Don’t you just hate Christmas music? Don’t answer that. I used to. Now, I’ve seen the light (so to speak). Perhaps this whole month I’ve…

  • Winter heat from an unlikely source. Perhaps I’m showing my bias as a violinist, but I have to share another of my favorite (sadly unknown) releases from my fellow brethren. Another wonderful cross-thatched affair of fourth world and new age grooves not from the west but this time from Japan’s other uber-talented, and quite prolific,…

  • Certain things aren’t lost on me. Whenever I look at my time slot at LYL Radio I feel a sense of responsibility. Each month on Wednesday, I end their programming day. For some, it’s 11 PM Paris time. While for others (like myself) it’s 4 PM Central Standard time. While one part of the world…

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