instrumental

Lee Byung-Woo (이병우): 1집 – 내가 그린 기린 그림은 -航海 (1989)

2020/08/14

I’m glad we’ve gotten hints of the special work Lee Byung-Woo has done quietly behind the scenes in his native Korea. I wager some of you’ve already heard his music soundtracking Bong Joon-Ho’s brilliant films like The Host and Mother. Somewhere lost to our shores has been Lee Byung-Woo’s earlier trailblazing career. 1989’s 1집 –…
Ian Lynn: Forgotten Summer

2020/06/10

I had a feeling I’d find a way to touch on one of the record label MMC’s other brilliant gems this year but I didn’t think it would be this way. How does one capture the current milieu? Unable to go much of anywhere at the moment, living either in open denial or in excessive…
Doug Smith: Order Of Magnitude (1990)

2020/01/21

Time for another palette cleanser. You already know mine: folk music. Doug Smith’s Order Of Magnitude is more of that same vein. However, it’s a bit of its own tributary. Here, largely acoustic guitar of the American Primitive style, get’s us one step closer to what a larger, universal other expects of “their” type of…
Today’s Latin Project: Today’s Latin Project (1983)

2019/06/28

A leftfield reimagining of vaunted Afro-Cuban jazz classics, in a new school “futuristic” Japanese Pop style, shouldn’t sound so interesting as it does in Today’s Latin Project. Launched on the demise of one famous group (The Tokyo Cuban Boys) and the rise of one important, new musical voice, Yasuaki Shimizu, you’d expect something titled Today’s…
Windsor Riley: The Move Of Life (1988)

2018/11/13

“Endlessly moving, always alive” no better words can describe this album than Windsor Riley’s own. There’s no way around it, The Move Of Life sounds lame on paper. A late ‘80s release, on another nameless record label, trying to peddle harmless instrumental music that would be at home on the Weather Channel or your local dentist…
Seigen Ono: The Green Chinese Table (1988)

2018/07/27

This one is a bit special. Last we heard from Seigen, he was introducing us to his very jazz-influenced take on Japanese New Age music. On the follow up to that epic debut, The Green Chinese Table, we find Seigen dividing his time up between recording sessions in Tokyo and New York City. It’s impossible…
André Geraissati: DADGAD (1988)

2018/04/10

Well, this one’s a tough ‘un to describe. Meditative, elegiac, and at points quite melancholic, André Geraissati’s DADGAD is another instrumental, guitar album that uses it’s one voice to say so many things. In this case, it is André Geraissati’s wonderful fusion of Americana and Anglophilic roots music with Brazilian sambista rhythms and edgings of open-tuned “eastern” music…
Joan Bibiloni: For A Future Smile (1988)

2017/09/15

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.…
Almir Sater: Instrumental (1988)

2017/09/13

Something so simple as an album of 10-string viola caipira instrumentals shouldn’t sound so impressive, but leave it to Campo Grande native Almir Sater to make you rethink a whole lot of something. This release, Instrumental, was more than just a musical document of some brief musical sojourn, it was a massive peek into the…
David Axelrod: The School Boy (1969)

2014/10/02

David Axelrod – 1969 Where’s my mind right now? Right now its shifting towards more pastoral, and organic music. What does this mean? it means, that its the time of the season when I indulge a bit in my love of folk music. That’s not to say that its entirely just strum and wailing kind…