walearic

  • Who says you need a trip out to the country to get into the spirit of Akira Inoue’s Anne: Dreaming an Island (The Light and Wind of Prince Edward Island) 夢みるアンの島 ~プリンス・エドワード島の光と風~? When I speak of road-tripping records, I speak of records just like this one, one that accepts all the conceits of the “road”…

  • How many of you love being outdoors? Even if it’s just me, I can completely empathize with the mindset being explored by Tatsuya Koumazaki and Febian Reza Pane’s「森の組曲」 / “Forest” Suite. Speaking for myself, nothing feels more refreshing and in a way meditative than walking around some greenery early in the morning. Experiencing the sights,…

  • It’s rare to find someone bridging the gap between Jethro Tull, Marc Bolan’s T-Rex, The Orb, and Toumani Diabate, but it seems this world can support only one Lion Merry. Simply scroll down to the bottom of this post, past the download link, and know that I could have easily gone into multiple rows to…

  • Forgive me for burying the lede but I have to go back to Yassue. For all of those that thought Yassue’s story ended on A Fine Day…I have to share a wonderful coda to that story. A Cosmic Pandora, if you will. Much like Yumiko Morioka’s MIOS, it was their little-known sophomore album that proved…

  • Once again, I’m back to my favorite kind of song: the love song. But not just any kind of love song. For this hour-long mix for LYL Radio I decided to explore songs that zero in on the range that (justifiably) make us the most anxious — it’s those imbued with feelings of lust, seduction,…

  • If it’s comfort week for me, it’s more music comfort for y’all. And it doesn’t get any more comfortable than Yasuko Agawa’s (aka Miss A) Dancing Lovers’ Nite. On the surface, far from being the jazzy/soulful Japanese pop music she’s much more known for, somewhere, lay something hidden: a fascinating, heart-pumping stab at taking her…

  • More fierce humans to support: Monday Michiru Akiyoshi-Mariano. Where does one start with the wildfly prolific career of Monday? How about the beginning with Mangetsu. Unlike little released in Japan at that time, Mangetsu was the sprawling debut of a young Japanese-American who couldn’t quite suss out any style she wanted to gravitate to (nor…

  • It’s time to fall back. Rather than entreat you with another long-winded overview of another artist’s work, how about we revisit just one more time this other work by Shinsuke Honda: Silence. Whereas Banka (Late Summer) played to the varied moods of late summer, of course, Silence from its album cover to its ruminative, meditative,…

  • Banka (Late Summer). What a name? Before I get ahead of myself, my apologies for not sharing the work of Shinsuke Honda much earlier. It’s one of my flaws as a music writer. I see music not in a stylistic sense but through an environmental lens. If it’s not in season, it’s not the time…

  • Recently, I asked my partner to name the kind of music they’d love to hear play for my next mix for LYL Radio. To my surprise, they simply said: “I’d love to hear more of that hammock music.” Hammock music. I asked them, “What do you mean?”

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