November 2016
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“Rhythmic music for African dance, Dervish rituals, and belly dance. Music for turning on accumulated energy.” — That’s what the liner notes to Anugama & Sebastiano’s Exotic Dance released on German record label Nightingale Records state boldly and clearly. For once, who am I to disagree? I boldly remember when I was a young kid…
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Nothing’s worse than someone recommending a half-great album. I hate doing so, and I’d imagine you’d half-hate downloading an album only to find out that you have to skip half the tracks. Be that as it may, I have to break my own rules, and whole-heartedly recommend this: take some time, download, and listen to Seri…
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I was hoping to start out by saying how its ok to feel thankful and be thankful. I feel very thankful that I’m I am to share this music with you…but damn! If someone should feel thankful it should be Seke Molenga and Kalo Kawongolo. Not only did they release an unbelievable hybrid of Congolese Soukous and cavernous…
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Who or what is the Phantom Band? Unknown, or unheard, by even the most die-hard CAN fan, this side project by founding CAN drummer Jaki Liebezeit and late-CAN era bassist (and ex-Traffic member) Rosko Gee finds them exploring the most trance-inducing part of CAN’s music – their reggae and African musical influences – to surprising results. It’s…
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I‘m still struck by this release. It’s hard to realize, but Seigén Ono was only 26 years old when he created his debut album, Seigén. Just months removed from assisting others like Yasuaki Shimizu’s Mariah, David Sylvian, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Takumi as their mixing engineer or producer, Seigén had just an inkling of all the arrangements he had to get…
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Going back to yesterday’s point about how Music Interior provided a space for musician’s to stretch outside their known fields, today we have another perfect example of what this exactly means. Tokyo-born and bred, Masahide Sakuma started out his career in the pioneering surfabilly/B-52s-influenced Japanese band Plastics. The multi-instrumentalist of the group, it wouldn’t be rare…
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Ichiko Hashimoto on acoustic piano, synthesizer, and vocal – that’s what the liner notes to Ichiko Hashimoto’s one and only release on Music Interior states as musician credits. Titled Ichiko and graced by a truly autumnal album cover, it’s an album that truly sounds like it looks. Ichiko is a musician well-versed in two worlds. As a trained pianist she…
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A promise tendered is a debt owed. I hinted at more music from Music Interior and here’s my first share. Let’s begin our brief sojourn discovering the albums released by Music Interior with Yoshio Suzuki’s meditative Morning Picture. Who was Yoshio Suzuki? On this album he wasn’t quite the musician he was known to be. Three…
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It’s not often you get a peek at something legitimately different. Released in 1985, on Canadian record label Attic, Sounds from the Interior (The Music Interior Sampler) seems to mimic the iconic New Age Windham Hill Record Samplers of the ’80s. We all know the drill now. Frame a compelling nature scene on a stark white album…
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In these dark and foreboding times, it’s important to latch on to things that provide hope. Maybe that’s why the music of Poland has seemed so striking to me lately. The vast majority — at least the majority which remains unheard and “out-there” — of this music was the product of unimaginable restraints. Before the rise of Glasnost and Perestroika,…
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