Expand your taste in music. Based in Beijing, China.
Though long out-of-print, this album screams for a proper reissue. The album combines a fine jazz quartet with Yamamoto’s sublime shakuhachi playing.
The personnel on this album were:
Bass – Gary Peacock
Drums – Hiroshi Murakami
Piano – Masabumi Kikuchi
Shakuhachi [Bamboo-Flute] – Hōzan Yamamoto
Coagulant hail from Uruguay, a country not known for a deep experimental music scene. This release, however, should attract attention to those who enjoyed those ritualistic post-Industrial music cassettes of the 1980s. There’s a heavy B-movie soundtrack vibe to this release mixed with electroacoustic music.
Quite enjoyable.
Lagas Turmales is a producer out of Monterrey, Mexico who produce a quiet, droning, monochrome ambient music. It’s lack of dynamics is precisely how ambient music should sound to me, if we’re talking about a purist definition of the genre. This is warm, rippling ambient music worth relaxing to. One could say it would fit in well as part of a Tarkovsky soundtrack.
This is a project I’d like to know more about. Transitory Tapes is responsible for releasing this intriguing album.
1000 Plateaux is the debut record by Hiiro Issiki, a Japanese composer. I don’t find too much information on Issiki’s background, but this record is a musical chimera, sprouting patterns and shapes at will, yet maintaining cohesion, and in many parts, beauty. What a stunning piece of work this is!
Respect goes to Bedouin Records out of Bangkok, Thailand, for releasing this album. It’s motivation to explore their catalogue further.
While I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day too seriously (traveling and lack of a suitable mate at this time will do that), and adding that Eastern Orthodox don’t celebrate the venerable Saint’s day until July 30, I do want to wish my friends and the kind readers who show up here a lovely day with your partner.
A bit of Roberta Flack singing Ewan MacColl’s masterpiece, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, should set the mood for the day nicely.
Tell me these words wouldn’t make your lover swoon:
The first time ever I saw your face
I thought the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave
To the dark and the endless skies, my love
To the dark and the endless skiesAnd the first time ever I kissed your mouth
I felt the earth move in my hand
Like the trembling heart of a captive bird
That was there at my command, my love
That was there at my command, my loveAnd the first time ever I lay with you
I felt your heart so close to mine
And I knew our joy would fill the earth
And last ’til the end of time my love
And it would last ’til the end of timeThe first time ever I saw your face
Your face, your face, your face
NPR does a great disservice comparing Tunisian singer Emel’s voice to Björk. There’s absolutely no comparison, and I say this as someone who likes Björk’s work a lot. Emel is simply a better singer.
Her album, The Tunis Diaries, is something closer to the Portuguese band Madredeus, whose singer, Teresa Salgueiro, Emel bares some vocal resemblance to.
The production is sparse, and it works perfectly for this album. She also does a great rendition of David Bowie’s, The Man Who Sold The World, which you can hear below. Remarkable.
I had a good friend whom I worked with at a record shop in Los Angeles called Dana, who was probably 20 years my senior or so, and he was always amazed at how I managed to retain so much information at a young age (I was 23 when I met him) about prog, psych and other weird musics. I told him it was simple – I had family who liked weird things, and I bought Audion Magazine quarterly without fail for many years.
I’m very happy to see the Freeman Brothers, who are responsible for this magazine and Ultima Thule Mail Order, for republishing these magazines digitally, complete with a fair number of legally licensed audio samples. Each magazine concentrates on some classic prog legend, is stuffed with reviews, and are written in an easy-to-read, enjoyable style.
A legend has passed. Return To Forever was my gateway drug to 70s jazz fusion, opening the door to discovering the band bearing the same name, Miles Davis at the peak of his powers (at least for my taste), the majesty of Weather Report, and delving back into Chick Corea’s back catalog.
Corea died of a rare form of cancer at the age of 79. May his memory be eternal.
French label WV Sorcerer Productions 巫唱片 offers up a quiet, pulsating drone album from American-Taiwanese-Chinese composer Li Daiguo. As far as experimental music goes, this is dark and foreboding in a far more organized way that what I’m used to hearing. Quite a fine effort.
I cannot think of any genre of music percussionist and composer Joseph Benzola doesn’t sound comfortable working in. There might be some bizarre concoction lying dormant in the underground somewhere, but it’s not worth wasting one’s time thinking much about.
This collection puts together what sounds something similar to Balinese percussion on the first track, Improv 24 November 2019, and then smoothly transitions to atonal piano music, then some improvisational music, and so on. The variation of styles, and how well everything meshes together, is impressive.
Hints of Alban Berg, Sun Ra, jazz played at a bar over a scotch (well, I’m thirsty, what can I say?) and a bunch of chaps having a banger on some Indonesian paradise all color this album.