Month: May 2024

  • Richard Bégin – Lavrador

    Richard Bégin – Lavrador

    Richard Bégin‘s latest release is a truly beautiful headphone-worthy work published by Reverse Alignment Records.  From their Bandcamp site: “”Lavrador” is a Portuguese term signifying peasant, plowman, or cultivator. Additionally, it is the name of the explorer João Fernandes Lavrador, associated with Labrador, a continental region in eastern Canada. Despite having a population of fewer…

  • Tribal People React to A-ha Take On Me For The First Time

    Tribal People React to A-ha Take On Me For The First Time

    It’s rather charming to see cultures like this clash.  These folks from Sindh, Pakistan, give their takes on everything from music to technology, usually with a calm, relaxed and jovial insight.  In this episode, they listen to a-ha’s classic tune, “Take On Me,” and it seems they really enjoy not only the music, but the…

  • leungarto – 吹耳 Blow My Ear

    leungarto – 吹耳 Blow My Ear

    Here we have a single track by Hong Kong-based urban musician leungarto providing a chilled out, relaxing take on some amalgamation of City Pop and vaporwave, but done in a much more soulful way.

  • Shahin Souri – Liminal Space

    Shahin Souri – Liminal Space

    Respect to Midira Records for publishing this work by Tehran-based composer Shahin Souri.  It is a most elegant take on ambient music.  There should be a better term for this, as the genre’s name is so badly abused these days, and this seems to transcend it.

  • Chiyomi Yamada – Gilyak Songs

    Chiyomi Yamada – Gilyak Songs

    From Chiyomi Yamada’s Bandcamp site: “Piano songs by the Japanese composer Akira Ifukube (1914–2006), interpreted by , voice, and Reiko Yamada, piano. Ifukube, who also composed the theme song of “Godzilla”, wrote these magical pieces based on traditional songs from native tribes of northern Japan. The sound and style of this music are somewhere between…

  • Reverso – Shooting Star – Étoile Filante

    Reverso – Shooting Star – Étoile Filante

    Avant-jazz trombonist Ryan Keberle collaborates with fellow New Yorkers Frank Woeste (piano) and Vincent Courtois (cello) on an exploration of new jazz influenced partially by the legendary Lili Boulanger, a favorite of my great-grandmother’s.  From Ryan’s Bandcamp site: “The music of this album is inspired in various ways by the seminal French composer, Lili Boulanger,…

  • ‘Do You Remember’ 5-part podcast series to trace origins, legacy of Hüsker Dü

    ‘Do You Remember’ 5-part podcast series to trace origins, legacy of Hüsker Dü

    From the venerable Slicing Up Eyeballs: “Minnesota Public Radio’s The Current has just  launched a five-part documentary podcast series called “Do You Remember?” that promises to trace the formative years and legacy of Hüsker Dü through interviews with those who were there as well as the three band members themselves — including Grant Hart, who was…

  • Various Artists – Canary Records: The Heart of a Mangas: Intersections of Popular Greek Theater & Rebetiko in Chicago & New York, 1923-29

    Various Artists – Canary Records: The Heart of a Mangas: Intersections of Popular Greek Theater & Rebetiko in Chicago & New York, 1923-29

    The ever-brilliant Canary Records graces us with more Greek theater music and rebetiko.  From the release’s Bandcamp site: “The word “mangas” for instance is untranslatable into English but has remained central to the notion of rebetika. It is a word that indicates a man who does not aspire to middle-class values and knows something deep…

  • Thierry Zaboitzeff – LUVOS migrations – EP

    Thierry Zaboitzeff – LUVOS migrations – EP

    Legendary former Art Zoyd composer and multi-instrumentalist Thierry Zaboitzeff has a new EP.  From his Bandcamp site: “LUVOS migrations is the original soundtrack of the dance film by Editta Braun and Menie Weissbacher, AT 2022. Vision of the future or images from a parallel universe? In breathtaking natural sceneries, automated industrial landscapes and deserted ruins,…

  • Chet Baker – Chet On Poetry

    Chet Baker – Chet On Poetry

    We have a rescued gem courtesy of the impeccable Right Tempo! record label out of Italy, and it covers late period Chet Baker in fine form.  From the release’s Bandcamp site: “«”Chet on Poetry” is not his last record, but indeed it differs from the others and it is the best and the most charming…