- Record Label: Light in the Attic Records
- Release Date: Feb 15, 2019
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Feb 15, 2019It is the kind of music you could imagine spending the rest of your life listening to.
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Mar 8, 2019The collection is a warm, poignant, deeply immersive set that is sure to please fans of the genre but quite honestly belongs in every home. It's that beautiful.
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Feb 22, 2019By showcasing an artistic fusion of the tranquil with the bustling, the primal with the technologically advanced, the compilation shows how much work has already been done to find ways of summarizing and celebrating the potential of this new reality.
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Feb 15, 2019Summing up an entire musical movement in a single reissue is no easy feat--even if it is three records long. But as a package, Kankyō Ongaku gets incredibly close, shining a brilliant light on one of Japan's most fascinating--yet hidden--musical periods.
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Feb 21, 2019This ambient music is not psychedelic. It never evokes outer space or the cosmos or, for that matter, the natural world, even when it uses the sound of water. It’s music for the indoors, music for doing things, there for you if you want to listen closely but also content to exist on a subliminal plane.
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The WireApr 3, 2019Like remembering the loading sound of a ZX Spectrum or the incidental music of Teletext, the feel of these tracks provokes an odd nostalgia for equipment, now superseded and obsolete. [Apr 2019, p.72]
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Mar 13, 2019While some of the music drifts a little close to the milky reassurances of New Age music (‘Praying for Mother / Earth Part 1’ places seemingly random plinking notes over the top of rippling running water that challenges the listener to not run to the loo), other tracks, such as ‘Variation – III’ by Masashi Kitamura + Phonogenix, move gorgeous ambient chords around the sound of waves licking the shoreline, a peace punctured occasionally by a chū-daiko drum to wholly peaceful affect. Together, the twenty three tracks here promote a warmth that feels somewhere close to paradise.
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MojoFeb 15, 2019These are out-of-reach glimpses of environmental paradise; hazy, transient, atomised, and, like the technological future they presaged, their expiration in-built. [Mar 2019, p.105]
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Feb 15, 2019Both as a listening and reading experience, the entire collection is fascinating and eye-opening, and far more than just pleasant, unassuming musical wallpaper. It's also somewhat overwhelming in a sense, simply because there's far more music from this era to discover, and this release barely scratches the surface.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 13 out of 14
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Mixed: 0 out of 14
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Negative: 1 out of 14
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Mar 4, 2019This instrumental album is a great relaxant. Traditionally and culturally oriented.
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May 7, 2019
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Jan 28, 2023A sonic utopia. This album is heaven. I cannot wait till they release Vol. 2!