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As most of you know, I write about music from time to time for Leisure Lab, and I’ve recently come across a few albums that really stand out as creative, unique, or just enjoyable. The most recent of these is So Many Ways by Lay-Far, a deep house producer from Russia. This record is…
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Producer, singer, and songwriter Erik Rico is a big inspiration for me. I recently got to interview him about his views on faith, and you can check that out right here: uplftmnt interview with Erik Rico.
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I love Makoto’s music, and the Human Elements album has long been a favorite of mine. Makoto jumps genres on the record in an expert fashion, artfully mixing chillout and drum and bass music. The songs’ soulfulness draws them all together. Previously you could only get Human Elements on CD and vinyl, but Good…
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I’ll be honest with you: I’ve been trying to get onto Groove Salad for years. Groove Salad is the online radio station from SomaFm that focuses on downtempo music. I’ve listened to it for a long time, and I always find inspiration there. They play downtempo / ambient music, which is definitely laid back,…
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The music of Nightmares on Wax is a big influence for me, and “Date with Destiny” is probably my favorite N.O.W. song. It’s great summer music, and the video illustrates that perfectly. And if you like chillout music, “Les Nuits” can’t be beat. Classic instrumental hip hop and downtempo music.
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A while back I got to email with Bluey of Incognito about musical genres, and of course I was ecstatic about it. Well the group has just put out a new record called Surreal (which is amazing by the way), and Bluey took time to tell me about it. Part one of that interview…
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I recently wrote about musical genres and sub-genres, and then shared the story with friends on my mailing list. You can imagine how exited I was when I got a direct response from Jean-Paul Maunick (aka Bluey) of Incognito! It’s always exciting when you get to communicate with your inspirations, and I’ve had the…
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I’ve loved the Rhodes piano sound for a long time, but the record that really gave me a passion for it was Cooking with Lasers by the Baldwin Brothers. This song was one of my favorites – it’s called “Dream Girl,” and it features vocals by Miho Hatori (of Cibo Matto).
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Lady Alma is one of my favorite vocalists. She’s mixed the sounds of gospel and Philadelphia neo soul with those of West London broken beat and future soul, collaborating with artists such as 4hero and Mark de Clive-Lowe, and of course Silhouette Brown. So I was pretty excited when I got to talk to…
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Underworld is a huge inspiration for me. I think that will be a little more apparent in songs to come. But something about their music that has inspired everything I’ve produced so far is the diversity in sounds and styles across all their tracks. Technically you might call them Techno, but they’ve made House…