During the late 2010s, music lovers around the world began obsessively listening to increasingly esoteric albums on Youtube. More often than not, they’d leave the browser on autoplay. This was how Facundo Arena, the composer and producer behind The Kyoto Connection, discovered the technonaturalistic pleasures of Kankyō Ongaku (environmental music), a distinctly Japanese interpretation of European, British and American minimalist composition and ambient music. “It was a kind of algorithmic magic,” he says. 

Upload by upload, the utopian music of Hiroshi Yoshimura and his 80s Japanese contemporaries transported Facundo back to his childhood. When he was five, his father placed him in karate lessons and began watching martial arts movies with him. From those early experiences, Facundo became fascinated Japanese history, tradition, and culture, particularly that of Kyoto - the cultural capital of Japan. Kankyō Ongaku reminded him of hearing the sounds of Japanese folkloric instruments as a young boy, and suddenly, the way the influence of Japan had manifested in his music made sense. “I had the sensation that for many years, I’d been doing something similar to the style,” he explains. 

Inspired, Facundo used an iPad and an old Akai cassette deck to record Postcards, his homage to Japanese minimalism and Kankyō Ongaku. By this stage, he was twelve years deep with The Kyoto Connection, the musical project he launched in 2005 in his hometown of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Over that late 2000s and 2010s, Facundo, later on joined by collaborators Rodrigo Trado (drums) and Jesica Rubino (vocals, now his wife) released numerous D.I.Y albums. Project by project, they followed the threads between 80s synth-pop, ambient, new age, house, techno and acoustic composition. 

Postcards introduced The Kyoto Connection to listeners around the world and brought Facundo into our orbit. During Argentina’s covid lockdown, Facundo received a set of soundscapes recorded in Kyoto by the Japanese musician and sound designer Masafumi Komatsu. Over several insular months, he decorated them with synthesisers, samples and subtle rhythms, creating The Kyoto Connection’s next album, The Flower, The Bird and the Mountain to be released via Isle Of Jura offshoot Temples Of Jura.

Ostensibly made up of twelve distinct tracks, listening to The Flower, The Bird and the Mountain feels more akin to spending calm, meditative time in twelve specific environments. Although the foundations they rest on are recordings made in geographic locations around Kyoto, Facundo has yet to visit Japan. As a result, the landscapes he paints sit somewhere between fiction and fact, richly pictorial sonic imagination juxtaposed with echoes of reality. Regardless, as his bubbling melodies and glistening synthesisers glide against Masafumi Komatsu's recordings, Facundo guides us into a blissful zone of tranquillity well worth spending time within.

Pressed on heavyweight 180 Gram Vinyl with sleeve design by Bradley Pinkerton.

The Kyoto Connection - A1 - Memories From Japan

Available Online: https://kaphase.work/monolith/

Free Download

Given Up

Lucrecia Dalt - Veta

After a series of EP, here's the parisian four piece's first album. 2 X 12" LP on 180g heavy vinyl.

04 Night Riders - Future Noir

Historic release of the first Meridian Brothers album, El Advenimiento Del Castillo Mujer.

Out 26th August on Discrepant. More info go to www.discrepant.net


El Advenimiento Del Castillo Mujer

El Advenimiento del Castillo Mujer

Meridian Brothers - Coplas pa' cantar al atardecer (LP preview)

Fernando Falcão - Amanhecer Tabajara (À Alceu Valença) (04:02)

The Sound Of Glades

Miyazaki

Roman Flügel returns to his experimental roots on new album for Lovefingers' @esp-institute, opening with 'Theme I', falling somewhere between wistful ambient and melancholic drone.

Read more & buy: http://www.stampthewax.com/2018/10/18/premiere-roman-flugel-theme-i/
Listen on Youtube: http://bit.ly/flugel-themeI

[ESP076] Themes

Listen on Youtube

Roman Flügel - Theme I (STW Premiere)

Tarta Relena som la Marta Torrella i l'Helena Ros.
Gravat, mesclat i masteritzat a Caballo Grande Estudios excepte Tou Votanikoú, masteritzat a Vacuum Mastering.
Portada de Clàudia Torrents.

Ma ezevgarósan és una melodia de Creta que ens va ensenyar l’Evgenía Toli a Creta mateix. Tota Pulchra és una polifonia tradicional de Còrsega. D’ençà és la unió de Polifonia CDG de Maria Arnal i Marcel Bagés amb D’ençà que ella partí de Toti Soler. Morenika és una melodia sefardí. Cecília és una cançó menorquina. Votanikoú és una cançó de rebetiko que vam escoltar cantada per Tomas Karamazakis. Figues és la Björk collint figues a Mallorca. So de Pastera és un copeo mallorquí.

Tou Votanikoú

It's grail time! Kalita are honoured to officially release for Record Store Day 2020 (29th August!) for the first time since 1983 Marcy Luarks & Classic Touch's mythical American-Nigerian Afro boogie masterpiece 'Electric Murder', accompanied by extensive liner notes based on interviews with Marcy's family and producer Daniel Irabor.

The product of the then husband and wife team of Marcy and Dan, 'Electric Murder' brought together both the former's American and the latter's Nigerian roots; recorded in London with UK-based session musicians, this mix of heritage and styles resulted in an Afro disco album unlike any other.

With original copies turning up for sale roughly once every few years, and with an eye-watering four-figure price tag to match, Kalita for this year's Record Store Day saves you the never-ending search for this true holy grail.

Released on black vinyl, with printed insert detailing Marcy's life and musical career.

Electric Murder

I Don't Want To Share Your Love

Buy here!

A2. Marcy Luarks & Classic Touch - I Don't Want To Share Your Love

Order 'Whatever The Weather' at: https://ghostly.com/products/whatever-the-weather
Or at the retailer of your choice: https://ghostly.ffm.to/whatever-the-weather


Follow Whatever The Weather
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Whatever The Weather

36°C

No está desafinado, es un cuarto de tono.

Tou Votanikoú

Tarta Relena

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