interior music
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While this blog may seem like it looks backward, it is actually in service of looking forward. I firmly believe that exploring new territory sometimes requires circling back to forgotten places. Right now, I’m exploring where Japanese ambient music left off after its early, pioneering “environmental and healing” period with artists like Hiroshi Yoshimura, Toshifumi…
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Stand By Satie? It’s pretty hard not to, when a whole slew of musicians – in all styles and genres – have been inspired by the late, great French impressionist composer. But how does one take the next step and actually attempt to interpret the man? It’s a question, I imagine, that was cycling in…
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You know, sometimes as I choose to share a bit of music, what strikes me to do might be things that might not strike others quite the same. One of those things, I’ve got to say, is that I’m still a big fan of album covers and album titles that invite your mind to wander.…
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What exactly gives life to any inanimate object? Is it the way it looks? Is it the way we interact with it? Or is it the memories we attach to it? I imagine these were some of the many questions revolving around Yoshihiro Kanno’s head when he was invited to create environmental music to fill…
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There’s a palpable meditation hovering around Lyu Hong-Jun’s masterwork 大地の詩, otherwise known as “Songs Of The Earth” or “Earth Songs”. Recorded for pioneering Japanese prefab home maker Misawa Home, landing place of equally pioneering musical works by Hiroshi Yoshimura and Yutaka Hirose, this album was supposed to provide another soundtrack to the unique, holistic experience they were selling. It’s…
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So very lovely. Forgive me if some of you are expecting something more experimental, electronic, or whatever else now. Me, I just want something like this. What is this? It’s the beginning of Ryokyu Endo’s sublime form of Japanese New Age music. In 1994, Ryokyu Endo’s Song Of Pure Land, or The Song Of Pure…
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It’s not often you stumble upon an album quite like this one. A huge debt of thanks goes out to a fellow reader, Francis, for sharing Kazutoki Umezu’s Diva with me (the first of two, from him, I’ll share with you). I’m still grinning from end to end just looking at the credits of this…
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When we last left off discovering the “comfiest music” on earth (all self-appointed, of course), Gontiti was gently surprising me both at a Japanese hair salon and, later on, at home discovering their little known, early experimental work. Today, I go even further back, to their beginnings as a duo ever more in tune with…
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Am I allowed to punt on this one? Literally, it’s all there — right on the album cover. Magical computer music by Magical Power Mako. I’ll never top this description. Just one look at the album cover puts you there — a smoldering Makoto Kurita surrounded by a shoji panel, two TVs playing VHS tapes, two…
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Here’s another worthy album for the canon of Japanese minimalism, Oscilation Circuit’s Série Réflexion 1. Released in 1984, by Sound Process, ostensibly a new part or truncation of Satoshi Ashikawa’s “Wave Notation” series, Série Réflexion 1 perfectly presents another facet of the label’s promotion of minimal music. This time around we get a feel of livelier stuff than any of…
ambient art pop art rock balearic brazilian electro-acoustic england environmental music experimental fourth world Funk fusion japan jazz minimalist mpb neo-folk neoclassical new age walearic