Tag: balearic

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 50

My newest episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio is a slinky-dinky hour of yacht rock and soft rock, perfect for recently divorced single parents, cooking dinner, or pretending to drive somewhere in the car you don’t own. Mostly 70s with a little bit of 80s. Please enjoy! Mp3 download here, if you’re interested. Sending love to you and yours.

Tracklist:
1. Kenny Loggins ft. Stevie Nicks – Whenever I Call You Friend
2. Brian Protheroe – Fly Now
3. Michael Franks – When Sly Calls (Don’t Touch That Phone)
4. Jaye P. Morgan – Let’s Get Together
5. Linda Thompson – Lover Won’t You Throw Me A Line
6. Hiromi Iwasaki – Kiss Again
7. Boz Scaggs – Jojo
8. Karen Carpenter – Midnight
9. The Alan Parsons Project – Eye In The Sky
10. Donald Fagen – I.G.Y.
11. Gerry Rafferty – Right Down The Line
12. Bobby Caldwell – Down For The Third Time
13. Ned Doheny – Sing To Me
14. Jane Kelly Williams – Boy, I’m Just Getting Over You

Mix for Sanpo Disco

Honored to contribute a mix to Sanpo Disco, a very inspiring Melbourne-based mix series that I’ve been a fan of for a long time. This is meant to be a pushback against the most brutal New York winter in recent memory: tropical and Latin textures, pillowy synths, ocean waves, sunny Japanese garage pop, crickets. Yes, that’s John Martyn covering “Over The Rainbow,” and it’s just as weird-good as you’re hoping. You can download an mp3 version here. Cheers, and stay warm!

Tracklisting:
1. John Martyn – Over The Rainbow
2. Art of Noise – Crusoe (Ambient Version)
3. Pili Pili – Be In Two Minds
4. Yoshiaki Ochi – Ear Dreamin’
5. Unknown Cambodian Artist – Side B, Track 1 (Edit) (Sayonara Sound Productions 16)
6. Akira Ito – W・A・T・E・R
7. Sally Oldfield – Blue Water
8. The Coconuts – Did You Have To Love Me Like You Did?
9. Yuki Okazaki – アイドルを探せ
10. Grace Jones – The Crossing (Ooh The Action…) (Edit)
11. Ana Gabriel – Parece Que Fue Ayer (For C)
12. Ryuichi Sakamoto – Put Your Hands Up
13. Karin Krog – Hymn To Joy
14. Sven Grünberg – Temaga
15. Владимир Леви & Ким Брейтбург – Не Уходи, Дарящий
16. World Standard – 私の20世紀 (My 20th Century)
17. Piero Milesi & Daniel Bacalov – Camera 2 Parte

The Art of Noise – The Ambient Collection, 1990

One final send-off to a perfectly nightmarish year. This technically isn’t an album but rather a compilation, mostly of tracks from The Art Of Noise’s 1986 In Visible Silence and 1987 In No Sense? Nonsense (both of which, if you’re unfamiliar with the group, are incredibly generous places to start). This collection was compiled by regular AON collaborator Martin Glover (aka Youth, a member of The Orb) with some tasteful mixing and transitions by regular Alex Paterson, also of The Orb.

This isn’t exactly what we think of as ambient these days, but boy oh boy is it a prime early 90s time capsule. If you’re an Art of Noise fan, you’ll love hearing favorites like “Crusoe” and “Ode to Don Jose” in slightly more vivid hi-fi. Try not to be put off by the language excerpted below–these are brilliant songs, and they make a lot of sense tweaked into an explicitly balearic context, given that a lot of AON signature synth textures and environments feel like very direct precursors to what is described below as ambient house. Includes “A Nation Rejects” and its successor “Roundabout 727,” the riff from which has famously been sampled in too many rap tracks to count. Choral samples, ocean waves, hypnagogic percussion, and cotton candy synthesizers. It’s almost embarrassing how up my alley this is, so I hope it’s the same for you.

Enjoy, thanks for reading, happy new year, and may we all be on the up and up.

With the advent of the nineties a new decade of clubs and DJs have floated into our consciousness. Their trip is a journey into peace. An ambient ecstasy. The creation of a new musical travelogue. A minimalistic embrace of everything good about the hard and uncompromising trance-dance of house and the surrealism of ambient instrumentalism.
Ambient or ‘chill out’ rooms have been set up in clubs all around the country as an alternative to the dance floor. Pure ecstasy escapism. Rooms for day-dreaming, fantasising or hallucinating.
This ambient collection is a sound step into the future. A collection of tracks alternatively known as ‘New Age House’ or ‘Ambient House.’ Everyday sounds, noises and atmospheres we’ve imagined and heard all our lives but never consciously listened to. An unfocused daydream with no background or foreground. A sense of not being yourself, or being apart from what you’re listening to. A draft into tranquility, in and out of reality.
Oft played and more than often sampled, The Art Of Noise have long been torchbearers for this form of ambient instrumentalism. So…chill out.

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[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 17

Here’s my latest mix for NTS Radio. End-of-summer balearic, Latin textures, 60’s-inspired lounge, a bit of funk, and Bill Nelson doing his best proto-Enya impression. If you like it, you can download an mp3 version here.

Also, I know it’s been quiet around here–I’m knee-deep in a few projects right now but am looking forward to sharing more music soon!

Tracklist:
1. Junko Ohashi – テレフォン·ナンバー
2. Ichiko Hashimoto – Le Beau Paysage
3. Quarteto Em Cy – Vida Ruim
4. Il Guardiano del Faro – Lei
5. Yoon Sin Nae – 이 밤을 즐겁게
6. Yukihiro Takahashi & Steve Jansen – Betsu-Ni
7. Sonia Rosa – Te Quero Tanto (I Love You, So)
8. The Slipstream Group – Bygones
9. Zabadak – Butterfly
10. Lena D’Água – Jardim Zoológico
11. Lydia Lunch – Spooky
12. Steely Dan – Do It Again
13. Maryn E. Coote – One Who Cares (Original 82-14)
14. Bill Nelson – Realm Of Dusk
15. Nuno Canavarro – Wask
16. Claire Hamill – Autumn: Leaf Fall

Haruomi Hosono, Shigeru Suzuki & Tatsuro Yamashita – Pacific, 1978

A classic. While Hosono needs no introduction around here, I’m realizing that Tatsuro Yamashita has perhaps not been given enough air time. For the unfamiliar, Yamashita is iconic in his own right, not just because of his classic Japanese Christmas favorite “Christmas Eve” or his enormous output but also because of his signature early-80’s take on a wall-of-sound expansiveness crossed with a deep love for the Beach Boys, relentlessly clever songwriting, and of course, mirror-polished synth programming. Shigeru Suzuki is perhaps best known for his work with Happy End and Tin Pan Alley, and is also a wildly prolific session musician, who’s contributed to over 588 recordings as of 2006.

Which brings us to Pacific, for which each track was composed by one of the above three. It also includes plenty of of contributions from–you guessed it–Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yukihiro Takahashi. Though YMO’s self-titled debut was also released in 1978, from what I understand Pacific came first, and feels very akin to much of the exotica and fusion that Hosono had already been fixated on across several projects. Still, Pacific is clearly the product of a handful of masterminds having fun together: its unabashed tropical nostalgia acts as a jumping off point for flitting between genres (lounge, funk, disco, rhumba, smooth jazz, Latin fusion, synth pop), all delivered in full-color with jaunty, winking songwriting.

Even with vaporwave and its kitsch-scraping genre contemporaries behind us, Pacific holds up as well as ever. It’s only in closer “Cosmic Surfin'” that we get a taste of the more hard-edged, crunchy electro that became YMO’s signature sound, and fittingly, a different version of the song went on to appear on YMO’s debut the same year. I highly recommend listening to this as much as possible before fall rolls around.

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Francesco Messina – Medio Occidente, 1983

Francesco Messina’s name has come up quite a few times around here. I’ve been very vocal about my admiration for his stark and gorgeous split with Raul Lovisoni, and have included tracks from it, and from this, in a handful of mixes. And while Messina’s name is frequently lumped in with iconic Italian minimalists like Roberto Cacciapaglia, Franco Battiato, and Giusto Pio (all of whom appear on this record), there’s not much information floating around about Messina himself–though this record seems to have acquired a cult following. Messina was born in Sicily in 1951 and studied design in Milan, where he met Battiato and his art entourage, with whom he collaborated musically and visually for many years. He’s currently a graphic design professor. That’s about all I’ve got.

I’ve avoided sharing this record for years because, aside from not knowing how to talk about it, I don’t even know how to classify it. Discogs has it catalogued as “Jazz, Pop, Folk, World, Country, Italo-Disco, Abstract, Ambient.” I would argue most of these, especially Italo, are inaccurate, but I don’t have any better suggestions. Slinky, smart instrumental pop with pristine drum programming that hints at balearic as much as Berlin school. Thick with candy-toned new age synth pads, nods to Latin percussion, and rotary melodic motifs suggesting (duh) Italian minimalism, though this is definitely not minimalist. If this hadn’t come out a year before Echoes, I might guess Messina had been listening to Badarou. Tinged with mysticism in ways that are much harder to define than the album cover would suggest, and with a few tracks that remind me of Lena Platonos or even Vangelis in that they manage to simultaneously be operatic, melancholic, synthetic, and evocative of patriotism. (The first track is the real wildcard–if it’s not for you, don’t be put off!) If you can better explain what exactly this is, please enlighten us in the comments. In the mean time, enjoy!

Wally Badarou – Colors Of Silence, 2001

I shared Badarou’s Echoes a while ago, and will probably share Words of a Mountain at some point, but I think his most recent solo release tends to get overlooked. Though the title pegs it as yoga music, there’s very little conventional new age to be found here–it feels more like the hotel lobby music of my dreams. I’ve never used it as a yoga accompaniment, but I have done a lot of deep cleaning with it, and I would imagine this would be great driving music. Alternately playful, tropical, nostalgic, reggae-tinged, meditative, cinematic, and as one would expect, endlessly smooth. Badarou himself seems to be conflicted about the work, citing poor promotion and “intimate” distribution. He disavowed it as an instrumental record, instead calling it a compilation of high-quality demos that were put together quickly for a friend’s project. Nobody needs me to say that Badarou is a genius; this is just a reminder that his wizardry holds fast even under unideal circumstance. (If you also listened to CFCF’s Colours of Life a gazillion times, you’ll love this–the sonic palettes and titles are so akin that I suspect it’s a direct nod.)

Miyako Koda – Jupiter, 1998

Solo record from Miyako Koda (dip in the pool, Love, Peace & Trance, personal style hero). A bit hard to pin down, as there’s a wide range between tracks, but it all feels very true to Koda’s aesthetic: alternately playful and very sober, shifting readily between straight tone choir-boy-esque vocals and spoken word (spoiler alert: closer “A Sea of Love” is an ASMR goldmine). Micro-glitch balearic jazz and delicate electronic pulsing with a bit of a Laurie Anderson feel. Production by Haruomi Hosono, Yasuaki Shimizu, Towa Tei, and Gonzalez Mikami.

To the best of my knowledge, the original recording (download link below) isn’t available for sale anywhere, but you can buy a very good six track mini-album of reworked tracks from Jupiter, featuring an all-star lineup (including mastering by Seigen Ono) from Chee Shimizu’s 17853 imprint here.

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 6

Listen to my sixth episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio below. I thought a lot about musical migration as I was making this: cross-pollination as a result of colonialism; exotic fantasy, escapism, and essentialism; and Brazil, both as a place of origin and as a source of inspiration. If you like it, you can download an mp3 version of it here. Enjoy!

Tracklist:
1. Carpenters – Invocation
2. Fé De Sábio – Crepúsculo
3. Isabelle Antena – Otra Bebera
4. Yellow Magic Orchestra – Shadows On The Ground
5. The Beach Boys – Til I Die (Alternate Mix)
6. Caetano Veloso – Gua
7. Mudd – Summer In The Wood
8. Orchestre Raymond Droz Avec Pierre Cavalli Et Son Orchestre – Passarinhos
9. Light House – 南太平洋
10. The Coconuts – If I Only Had A Brain
11. Googoosh – Sahel Va Darya
12. Brenda Ray – Another Dream
13. Miharu Koshi – 逃亡者
14. Nightingales Recorded by Jean C. Roché – In A Waste Ground Beside A Stream In Provence, June
15. Mariko Fuji – 雪
16. Aaliyah – At Your Best
17. Mike Oldfield – Into Wonderland

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 5

Listen to my fifth episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio below. I wanted it to feel like an ideal limousine fantasy soundtrack. If you like it, you can download an mp3 version of it here. Image by whtebkgrnd. Enjoy!

Tracklist:
1. Cantoma – Maja
2. Interior – Hot Beach
3. Paul Hardcastle – Return of the Rainman
4. Tabo’s Project – Feel
5. Ice Choir – Unprepared
6. Regrets – L’avion
7. Colin Blunstone – Touch
8. Joan Bibiloni – Sa Fosca
9. Billy Mackenzie – In Windows All
10. CFCF – Fleurs Laisses Dans Un Taxi
11. Software – Island Sunrise