spain
-
Traveling. That’s all I can think about now. I won’t bore you with too much autobiography but life has been quite stressful lately. So, when I put on music – or when I share music – I want it to take me (or us) somewhere. And lately, its cardinal points have taken me to the…
-
Brace yourselves, let’s see how far I can take this review of Javier Zuazu’s Cuaderno De Invierno (or A Winter Journal). What was this album? 50-odd minutes of Spanish New Age that hovers from impressionistic piano-led instrumentals and wonderfully, minimal, warm and tender ambient mood music. Throw in one gorgeous ballad and once again, I’m…
-
Recently, while dabbling in the world of wine reviews, I’ve been ruminating on a term that I believe would be well-adapted for use in the music criticism realm: QPR. “QPR”, or quality-to-price-ratio, is a term used by wine aficionados to denote how much bang for your buck inexpensive wines can provide. While it’s awfully rich…
-
The more I burrow down rabbit holes, the more I realize music has interesting ways of making (seemingly) strange bedfellows work best together. Case in point: Fania Miñaur’s all too brief career and this album, Deja Hablar Al Tiempo.
-
Somehow, it’s becoming a recent recurring theme of mine to highlight outside the box music creators. Some of my favorite albums are those by artists whose first creative outlet isn’t exactly music per se. On Poema A Dos Voces we’re treated to such a spectacular vision by Basque poet, sculptor, psychologist and singer-songwriter, Ana Benegas…
-
What a shining moment. It took Mecano two albums to properly shake off being also-rans, to truly get to what made (or would make) them special. Mecano’s Ya Viene El Sol is an electro-pop album but it’s also one slippery enough to fit many other styles and genres, yet still come off as theirs. Outside…
-
Six years after our first introduction to Joan Bibiloni, via his fantastic debut (Joana Lluna), the world had moved under him. For A Future Smile presented Joan Bibiloni in a way unlike anything before. Just a year earlier Joan had been commissioned by a Spanish TV network to create a soundtrack for a nature documentary.…
-
Simply sublime. What else can you say? From the man who literally wrote the definitive word on Flamenco technique, comes a work showing the full expanse of his personal creative method. Juan Martin is one of the most iconic names in Nuevo Flamenco. Somewhere, down the line, his lifelong interest in art and painting (owing a…
-
One of my favorite albums from one of my favorite record label series. Largely piano-based, José Luis Macias’s Regreso a Valencia (Returning to Valencia) touched on that personal essence that made other albums like Toshifumi Hinata’s or Ichiko Hashimoto’s so intimate and gorgeous. Combining western-style minimalism with their own more regional, neoclassical styles, all these releases affect austerity at first, but…
-
ugust 21st, 1988 in Rotterdam, Netherlands must have been some kind of wonderful night. On that night, the music of composer Madrileño Mariano Lozano-Platas played to a crowd of 250,000 in attendance (and millions on TV) in an event unlike any seen/heard before. Heralding the designation of Rotterdam as the culture capital of European in…
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