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…
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!…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…