japan
-
Blessed are those who have background info to work from. I say this because I need to come clean about the album I’m writing about here: I have little to no info about those behind the music. With great pain, I have in my possession this wonderful work – Plus Cross Power Flower – whose…
-
Before I introduce you to Missa Fukuma’s Festa Manifesto, I’d be remiss if I didn’t share how I first encountered her music. I was in Osaka, visiting Eiji’s Revelation Time record store, when I kept glancing at the stack of CDs on his counter. Fearing that I was taking too much of his time, a…
-
One of the wonders of digging into history is realizing how life has a way of shaking out differently than you expect. Right now, as I’m ingesting all this information outlining Mari Hamada’s 編む女 (The Knitting Woman), I’m starting to see how it all digests into capturing a bit part in her creative career. Now…
-
Much like many of you, once you’re done catching up with Maya Hayashi’s life, you’ll come to the same conclusion I did: glad she made it out the other end. Before her current career as a farmer and television personality, Maya had a quite short but very memorable career as a model turned singer, culminating…
-
When I listen to Harumi Kitagawa’s Love & Flowers, I’m instantly transported to what I love about music. It’s its ability to show maturity in a way that is simply mature. Coded in phrasing, couched in a certain sophistication, one can be “adult” without falling for the adult trappings of trying to compete with youth.
-
As I’ve shared before, I often feel blessed to have a platform that allows me to (perhaps) introduce new artists or concepts to the world. When I listen to Miroque’s music, I feel a sense of lightness—a breath of fresh air that reminds me why music holds such a profound place in my life and…
-
Sometimes you’ve just got to ask yourself: “Why am I doing this?” As I keep scouring through myriad broken links, countless blank pages, and fruitless “archived” information, I keep thinking, “Just what is there to gain from sharing something like Nazoo’s Dear Heavens, Children In His Twilight?”
-
What better way to ease into spring than with an album that exemplifies that grand idea we call “rebirth”? Rebirth, more often than not, is defined by what one lets go in order to awaken something entirely different. And in the case of Mayumi Itoh, it’s about completely putting to bed a certain past so…
-
You know, for me, sometimes the most fascinating thing about interviews like these with Dream Dolphin is discovering just how much I don’t know.
-
There’s just something about Valentine’s Day that stirs me to share music steeped in that feeling. If you know me, you know I love “love songs.” I firmly believe that the hardest songs to write are those that touch on love (in its myriad meanings). It’s what led me this time around to cut to…
ambient art pop art rock balearic brazilian electro-acoustic england environmental music experimental fourth world Funk fusion japan jazz minimalist Mix neo-folk neoclassical new age walearic