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Oct 10, 2024 | 
insheepsclothinghifi.com | Phil Cho
A bonafide living legend, the desert-based ambient pioneer Steve Roach was part of an early wave of American artists pushing the boundaries of synthesizer music.
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Sep 19, 2024 | 
insheepsclothinghifi.com | Phil Cho
The seemingly endless well of ’90s CD-era Japanese downtempo bands continues to reveal new secrets… Our latest discovery is Natural Calamity, a trio comprised of guitarist Shunji Mori, bassist/keyboardist Kuni Sugimoto, and British singer Stephanie Heasley. Mori and Sugimoto met in the early ’90s and released their first album as Natural Calamity, Dawn in the Valley, in 1992 for the great File Records.
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Aug 13, 2024 | 
insheepsclothinghifi.com | Phil Cho
Last week, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s posthumous album Opus was released alongside an accompanying film. Recorded during his final concert in the fall of 2022, the album is an enduring testament to Sakamoto’s musical legacy featuring a meticulously curated selection of his classic soundtracks, iconic compositions for adverts, a song from Yellow Magic Orchestra’s debut album, a track from his final album 12, and three previously unreleased pieces.
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Aug 8, 2024 | 
insheepsclothinghifi.com | Phil Cho
In the late-80s, a decade after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese rock music began to spread from Beijing into the mainstream through the university protest movements surrounding the 1989 TiananmenSquare massacre. The “Father of Chinese Rock” Cui Jian’s “一无所有 (Nothing to My Name),” a coded political love song, would become the unofficial anthem for Chinese youth and activists, with most students across China knowing the refrain.
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Aug 1, 2024 | 
insheepsclothinghifi.com | Phil Cho
While a relatively new phenomenon in America & Europe, record cafes/bars have existed since the late 1920’s in Japan. These dedicated listening spaces originally played mostly jazz and classical music, but these days, record bars can take on many different forms and feature all varieties of sounds and genres. Given the comparatively lower rent and relative ease of acquiring a liquor license in Japan, almost any space can be transformed into a place for drinking and listening.
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Jul 25, 2024 | 
insheepsclothinghifi.com | Phil Cho
With three of the classic Sade albums (Promise, Diamond Life, Stronger Than Pride) recently repressed and widely available again, we thought we’d highlight a relatively unknown and underrated projected from the expanded Sade universe. Sweetback (probably named after Melvin Van Peebles’ 1971 film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song) was an English band comprised of members of the band Sade, but not including front woman Sade Adu.
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Jul 18, 2024 | 
insheepsclothinghifi.com | Phil Cho
Love (Art & Music) saves the day… In the late ’90s, Gelareh Khoie, an Iranian painter who grew up amidst the Iranian revolution, moved to Honolulu in search of a new beginning. After immersing herself in the visual arts and party scenes, Khoie began throwing a series of art exhibitions that uniquely fused music and art, breaking barriers in the process and building community around the two seemingly disparate scenes.
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Jul 9, 2024 | 
insheepsclothinghifi.com | Phil Cho
One of the most hated and controversial genres around, Smooth Jazz gets a bad rap for a number of reasons: Kenny G is the genre’s undisputed king and earned a fortune off his easy listening albums; a large majority of the music is a sort of bland, repetitive, and uninspired digital form of jazz that’s miles away from the fierce electric sound of Miles Davis or the spirituality of John Coltrane; the demographics of listeners leans heavily white; for decades, it was near impossible to avoid on...
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Jul 2, 2024 | 
insheepsclothinghifi.com | Phil Cho
In 2018, LA-based jazz and post-rock guitarist Jeff Parker (Tortoise, Chicago Underground Quartet, Isotope 217) began an extended residency at a small, unassuming neighborhood bar in Highland Park. Held on Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy (ETA), the sessions would become an essential meeting place for a growing community of experimental musicians in Los Angeles exploring jazz, electronics, and improvisational music.
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Jun 25, 2024 | 
insheepsclothinghifi.com | Phil Cho
With the POiSON GiRL FRiEND hype reaching a fever pitch recently (her upcoming show in Los Angeles sold out within 10 minutes), we thought we’d highlight another CD-era Japanese dream pop group that deserves more shine. Sugar Plant is a cult favorite Japanese group consisting of vocalist Chinatsu Shoyama and guitarist Shin’ichi Ogawa.
