balearic

  • As the year begins to draw to a close, my mind goes back to some of the people we lost this year. I’m thinking of artist’s artists like Alan Rankine, Pharoah Sanders, Tina Turner, and YMO greats (like the sorely missed Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yukihiro Takahashi). In this year full of great loss, at the…

  • Is it: “Everything new is old again?” or is it: “Everything old is new again?” Before I left for my visit to Japan, I was freshly reminded of this paradox by (friend of the blog) Chris Morris’s YouTube share of an autumnal neo-folkloric favorite of mine: Begoña Olavide’s Salterio – one I reminded myself to…

  • Looking back, it feels like my relationship with Endy goes back more than recently. Trolling through my Discogs orders I see that my oldest purchase from the man behind Groove Bunny Records was in 2017 – a copy of Mich Live’s Message From Heart which y’all finally got a chance to listen to in 2019.…

  • It’s late summer again. Like before, I’m drawn to music that evokes feelings found at the corners of each such season. And in today’s case, it’s that pull of the sea (or a life aquatic) that reminds us that life keeps moving, as much as we keep exiting, stage left. It’s something you hear in…

  • Many moons ago, someone interviewed me and asked me (to paraphrase them), “What makes you pick what you share on the site?”Now, if I remember correctly, I think I answered: “most of the time, it’s great music tied to a great story.” It’s with this in mind that today let’s do things a little differently.…

  • Timing. Isn’t that what life’s all about? If you’re there at the right moment, it all works out. If you’re there late, you’re at someone else’s fate. If you’re there too early, all that effort might not be for naught. If you’re speaking about Japan’s Kusu Kusu (and their album, 世界が一番幸せな日 (Sekai Ga Ichiban Shiawase…

  • There is no harder thing for a music reviewer to do than categorize music that’s, quite simply, uncategorizable. Especially so when it’s trying to pigeonhole or describe Chito Kawachi’s jaw-droppingly, unclassifiable 1993 debut, チトチック/クラクラ (CHITOTIHC/KULA-kura). 

  • Sometimes there isn’t any time better than the right time to share something. And in my case, it’s now or never, for East Pulse’s Asian Mirage, a fascinating curio or one-shot release by Japanese jazz flutist Toshiaki Yokota and multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire Chito Kawachi, who we’ll get around to later. 

  • When writing about Viktor Lazlo, the musical alias of Sonia Dronier, my mind began to think of parallels. I kept thinking of the soft, beautiful, Impressionistic paintings of yore. Paintings that appear delicate from afar but reveal a different textural depth the closer you get to each canvas. I say this because I sense sympathetic…

  • Summer. There’s just something about hearing that word, about living in that season, that brings a certain urgency in me. It’s the meaning I place behind it that allows me to express my best sense of self. It’s when I think this blog’s readers get to hear music that’s the closest to what I enjoy…

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