Absolutely check out Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990.
Light In The Attic has been releasing an archival collection of Japanese ambient and new age, and Kankyō Ongaku (“Environmental Music”) is kind a greatest hits compilation. It’s a good jumping off point, if you like I recommend checking out each of the artists featured. Hiroshi Yoshimura in particular has been subject to a wave of appreciation, his Music For 9 Postcards is closer to Eno or Satie, while Green is closer to New Age, and sounds like an antecedent to a lot of the great Japanese video game soundtracks of the 90s.
On the American side I’ve been really enjoying Annual Flowers In Color by Imaginary Softwoods, who’s one third of the seminal drone trio Emeralds. It’s gentler than Emeralds and has a pastoral quality to it.
Lastly, over the winter I found Passive Aggressive by Johnny Nash and Suzanne Kraft. It was released back in 2017 and it’s a cinematic throwback to 80s-early 90s ambient, with an emphasis on keyboards and processes guitar.
Hope you find something you like!
Thanks for this, never know where to start with these kinds of bands with an insular cult following. Insular cult followings aren’t necessarily bad either! I just don’t know what the good entry point is
That Destroyer album really came and went huh? It’s still a top 5 album of the year so far for me, and I think it lyrically holds it’s own in our shared weird accelerated sense of time, but no one is talking about it at this point like it’s a great album of 2020.
I mean it’s not like this was dominating the airwaves or anything. But there was definitely an audience for this stuff beyond critics, and some of the artists were able to build pretty respectable careers and followings that wouldn’t be possible if this was just a bunch of industry navel gazing. I would be curious about Spotify numbers for those songs as well.
Every comment section on this era has the same 10 year old argument gaslighting people.
If we’re gonna go by YouTube numbers, “Deadbeat Summer” has 3.2 million views, “Feel It All Around” has 2.7 million. “Still Sound” is a year later, it’s got 4 million. That’s a lot of bloggers
I'm not a big Charlatans fan so I probably won't be checking out the new Tim Burgess album. That being though, have y'all checked out his listening parties on twitter? They listen to an album and the artist drops into talk about the recording, their influences, and so on.A few weeks back he did Ariel Pink's Before Today with Ariel there. Last Friday he did Separation Sunday with all of the Hold Steady dropping in to add stuff. It's actually pretty dope, especially considering Burgess' audience is hearing a lot of this stuff for the first time and seems to be really enthusiastic about experiencing new stuff. Ariel in particular seemed genuinely flattered that people responded so well to him.
It feels like I’ve spent a decade working through this album. I loved “A More Perfect Union” the first time I heard it, but the album was so dense that I couldn’t absorb it all. Once every year I carve out another chunk of it to absorb. At this rate I’ll probably be on “The Battle Of Hampton Roads” by the time this album turns old enough to die for its country.
I am a soft soft man with an aversion to physical violence. The only title belt I own is for best Weird Al impersonator, so if you see someone looking to bust into “Dare To Be Stupid” at any moment, it me.
Coming to Richmond on a regular basis eh Tom? Better watch your fucking back, or else If I ever see you I might have to say hello in as awkward a way as possible. I guarantee it will be earnest yet off-putting
“ From what I have been led to understand, “Sicko Mode” has now become a strip-club perennial on the level of “Pour Some Sugar On Me.””
Sure Tom, that was some other 6’7 giant of a man blocking my view at Paper Moon yesterday
Are you kidding? This is an obvious organic outpouring of support for the Very Good policies of Mr.Yang by longtime commenters of this (checks notes) Billboard affiliate website!
I’m sorry mama, but I’ve been listing again
Me and the old man got a head start on our top 10s
And rest assured tonight I’m going to be in the comment section with all my friends
Provided we can stop arguing about Dan Bejar’s late decade output before 10
To be fair in the same sentence she referenced Carlyle, which counts Dick Cheney as a former CEO and has employed just about every major neocon in some capacity
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