• Music

    Southeast of Rain (东南有雨) – 42 Days (四十二天)

    September 16, 2021 - By 

    Sophia Shen and Lemon Guo work together as Southeast of Rain (东南有雨), an electroacoustic/field recording project based in the United States, with one living in New York and the other living in the San Francisco Bay area. The album is the result of 42 days of mixing avant-garde experimental music, natural sounds, traditional Chinese instruments and improvisational techniques and sublime vocal work into a gentle, though very experimental album. I request this of everyone, but specifically of my former students in Beijing – take the time to listen to this.  It is a stunningly beautiful piece of work.

  • Music

    High Pulp – Motel Money (feat. Takuya Kuroda)

    September 15, 2021 - By 

    High Pulp hail from Seattle, Washington and are currently being published by Anti- Records, best known for releasing albums by Tom Waits, Neko Case and Antibalas.  This sounds like none of them, and it caught my attention in a most pleasant way. Motel Money is a single track, and it’s a burner.  This is an instrumental track, and it mixes in everything from avant-garde jazz to beat-driven R&B to psychedelic synthesizer-heavy electronica, as their release page indicates.  Add to this the stellar trumpet playing by Takuya Kuroda, and you have something that can equal any of the nu jazz bands…

  • Music

    Euphemia Rise – Born a Cow

    September 14, 2021 - By 

    Euphemia Rise is a rather remarkable project run by Wim Lankriet.  Born a Cow is Wim’s debut album, and it’s quite a fine work, combining an acidic psychedelic music which reminds me of Syd Barrett in parts while maintaining a 1980’s-1990’s gothic feel. Lyrically, it is a heavy album covering such topics as. “being (sexually) different and facing people’s judgments – but also venture into darker subjects such as drug prostitution, sadomasochism, rape…” Wim notes, and I would strongly agree, that the tone is never negative.  I’m not sure this music put a smile on my face, but it left…

  • Music - Music Documentaries

    Alexei Aigui – 1000 Miles Till The Next Embrace EP

    September 13, 2021 - By 

    Our friend and noted composer Alexeï Aïgui was just featured here recently for his releases, Palimpsest and Alcohol, at the end of July, and it seems that he’s kept himself quite busy as of late, so we’re pleased to announce this EP, a soundtrack to the film 1000 Miles Till The Next Embrace, a documentary on tango directed by Irina Rubia. Alexeï has proven himself to be among the best of this generation of soundtrack composers, but there is one track which utterly stands out for me, the fifth track, titled Freeze.  It has a feeling of a post-rock composition,…

  • Music

    Miša Blam – Sećanja

    September 12, 2021 - By 

    This is one of the coolest archival recordings I’ve come across in some time!  Serbian bassist Miša Blam (Serbian bio only) is a name known to jazz aficionados because of his work with legends like Chet Baker and Sal Nistico, but this album is a minor disco classic.  A lot of jazz-funk was popular throughout Yugoslavia (think of musicians like Igor Savin, Josipa Lisac and the legendary Janko Nilović), but this album was limited to 1,000 copies. Everland Music has preserved a classic of the genre, and are owed a debt of thanks for this re-release.

  • Music

    Psycho & Plastic – Soundtrack 2: Pappel

    September 11, 2021 - By 

    I seem to be running into a lot of Berlin-school style musicians recently, but this is the first one I’ve run into who is actually from the Berlin area.  From Psycho & Plastic‘s Bandcamp site: Award-winning German author Dalibor Markovi​​ć commissioned Psycho & Plastic to create an original soundtrack for his debut novel ‘Pappel. Die Geschichte eines Herumtreibers’ on the heels of their 2020 ambient masterpiece ‘Placid House’ and ‘Soundtrack 1: Schwelen’. Scheduled for a simultaneous release, book and album are deeply intertwined in form and content. ‘Soundtrack 2: Pappel‘ follows the novel’s tree-turned-human protagonist Konrad Pappel on his tour…

  • Music - Podcast - Radio

    Space Is The Place 09 09 2021

    September 10, 2021 - By 

    Yesterday, Space Is The Place, a magnificent podcast out of England, did us a huge honor and asked us to contribute a mini-playlist.  We submitted seven tracks for the show, as I felt these were pieces of music which influenced how I listen to music and where that influence may be headed into the future, so here they are… New Order – Ceremony I must have been around 13 or so when I first heard the track, as I used to own a shortwave radio during my childhood.  I also grew up with uncles on both sides of the family…

  • Music

    Li Yilei – 之 (Of)

    September 9, 2021 - By 

    Li Yilei is a London-based sound artist based whose roots are Chinese.  Li’s latest album, Of (Chinese: 之) reminds me of some of the amazingly good Japanese new age ambient releases of the 1980s which seem to be gaining a lot of attention like Hiroshi Yoshimura and some of Haruomi “Harry” Hosono’s more eclectic albums outside of his work with the Yellow Magic Orchestra. The instrumentation consists of analogue synthesizers, vocal samples, field recordings and string instruments such as the violin and guqin (I was introduced to the instrument while teaching in China back in 2018), and Li is also…

  • Music

    Xerxes The Dark – Soundtrack To The Blind Owl

    September 8, 2021 - By 

    I feel a bit silly admitting this, but for some reason, I thought I had Soundtrack To The Blind Owl previously.  Iran’s foremost dark ambient composer Xerxes The Dark has been active for many years now, and is part of a pretty amazing scene developing in one of the least likely places on Earth.  Then again, with the Internet, I am expecting mind-blowing post-Industrial music to pop out of Togo or Burkina Faso eventually. To the music.  There are six tracks of ominous drone on this album.  This isn’t a typical drone or ambient album, however.  Xerxes expertly mixes in…

  • Music - Music Promo - Podcast - Radio

    A Music You Need To Hear Playlist on Space Is The Place Radio This Thursday!

    September 7, 2021 - By 

        View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Space Is The Place Radio Show (@spaceistheplaceradioshow) On Thursday, September 9th at 11 pm GMT, the venerable Space Is The Place Radio Show (see their Instagram page here) is playing a mini-mix of tracks I selected which influenced my taste.  This will be a live program, which you can hear by clicking on this link at the appointed time.  Our friends there let us know that it will be hosted on Mixcloud as a podcast afterwards, and we will be sharing the link, as well as a few…