Chee Shimizu - Obscure Sound (a music book)

the Per Tjernberg record is amazing.

a track off that popped up on my ipod earlier, really good odd electronic fusion stuff. also been enjoying rainer bruninghaus, orquesta de las nubes and glen velez

Second the recommendation for Transfer Station Blue as well! I'll check the Tjernberg today. At least from the Spotify list there seems to be q

Second the recommendation for Transfer Station Blue as well! I'll check the Tjernberg today.

At least from the Spotify list there seems to be quite a bit of Spanish stuff on the list, which seems like an interesting niche to dig further in (I know v little about Spain's music scene, apart from a couple of Balearic artists and some of the early 80s post punk scene from Madrid).

Oops ignore the earlier post, looks like I was a bit trigger happy with the 'submit' button :(

"grape iris" is so good

Heh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dy-fdpqJwk

Hey, if anyone sees the reissue of Yasuaki Shimizu's 'Subliminal' on sale in Europe at a good price, please let me know!

it's this thing btw:

https://www.discogs.com/Yasuaki-Shimizu-ReSubliminal/release/11738359

I've just spent the last few hours compiling everything in the book (at least according to those Discogs lists) into a bunch of Apple Music playlists. There's 1771 songs on here, compared to the 350-ish on the Spotify one - I don't know if Apple's got rarer stuff, or if the compiler of the Spotify one just got bored (I wouldn't blame them).

I was really surprised how many albums were up there. Loads weren't, but I reckon about 50% are?

Here's the master playlist, which has everything on it:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/playlist/obscure-sound-complete/pl.u-AkAmEgGc77pal2

I've also broken it out as twelve separate playlists for the categorised chapters, which might be a bit more useful/manageable. Rather than paste twelve URLs here, you can add each of the playlists from my Apple Music profile page here:

https://itunes.apple.com/profile/mattnida

Let me know if you spot any mistakes or anything I've missed.

whoa! very impressive, can't do Apple Music unfortch but perhaps some kind soul can cross-reference

Thanks for your work in putting these playlists together. really enjoying listening to them.

My pleasure. Yes, it's quite fun to have these on shuffle I find, a lot of interesting chance discoveries.

wow - i'm not on apple music atm but that's solid work!

thank you! listening to Cosmic at work.

Awesome, thank you for taking the time to do this! Incidentally, I was thinking of reviving this thread yesterday - I just ordered the Grape Iris D-Day off Discogs a few days ago. Funny timing.

Will dive into the Apple playlists!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_lub0vIMuc

I've been looking for a physical copy of Eve's Canto Aberto MPB album hearing this track in a Hunee mix about a year ago. It's in Obscure Music, too. No luck. It's not even listed on Discogs, no reissues either. Lovely song though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=124&v=nzQ0CTwshHU

Oops, maybe now it'll embed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzQ0CTwshHU

it seems likes the great apple music playlists that Bamboohouses was kind enough to create are down. did anyone get a chance to download or mirror them? was still enjoying shuffling through them. wish i would have created my own local copy before they disappeared!

I never even knew that Dome put out other people's records, but I'm sure I must have known that at one point.

― MaresNest, Friday, 28 July 2017 09:40 (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Just that, the A.C. Marias 7" and also the highly recommended Desmond Simmons "Alone On Penguin Island" album.

― stirmonster, Friday, 28 July 2017 10:08 (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's also the album by Michael O'Shea, who I believe they discovered busking. Never seen a vinyl copy though.

https://img.discogs.com/Tn-tKHfm4tJFMr942-GbM9uUJ9w=/fit-in/200x200/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-167429-1272017742.jpeg.jpg

Please update this incredible thread regularly kthxbye.

it seems likes the great apple music playlists that Bamboohouses was kind enough to create are down. did anyone get a chance to download or mirror them? was still enjoying shuffling through them. wish i would have created my own local copy before they disappeared!

― dsb, Saturday, 13 October 2018 16:20 (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm so sorry about that. I was on a free Apple Music trial through my phone provider that I chose not to continue, but I didn't think it would nuke all those playlists with immediate effect and that I'd at least get some warning or be able to back them up. I'm sorry for any problems this has caused anyone.

If it's any consolation, this person - https://open.spotify.com/user/gh_cl?si=htvNwcoUTSuucOpyz_GiSQ - has done the same thing on Spotify, alongside many other great playlists. I'm convinced that if I ever met gh_cl we'd be really good mates, our tastes are astonishingly similar.

There's also the album by Michael O'Shea, who I believe they discovered busking. Never seen a vinyl copy though

Indeed! I'm not sure how I missed that one out as The Michael O'Shea (which is incredible) is one of my most listened to records. It is being reissued shortly, apparently.

In other news, i have heard that Obscure Sound 2 is coming soon.

Nice, that's good news! Curious to see what it'll be like/if there'll be any changes in its approach. I still regularly dip into the lists (posted on Discogs) for new discoveries and will look up random things from his instagram account from time to time. The latest one which I'll bump here is this Saada Bonaire album:

https://www.discogs.com/Sa%C3%A2da-Bonaire-Sa%C3%A2da-Bonaire/release/5106716

Fingers crossed he may take it as an opportunity to do another printing of the first one.

this looks U&K: https://lightintheattic.net/releases/4088-kankyo-ongaku-japanese-ambient-environmental-new-age-music-1980-1990

holy shit that packaging is irresistible to me

yeah that looks great

it is v pretty

Oh wow, way to go LITA!!!

I've reactivated my Apple Music subscription, for now at least, so I spent a bit of time this morning rebuilding the Obscure Sound playlists. Here's the master one with everything on it; the chapter-by-chapter ones are on my Apple Music profile.
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/playlist/obscure-sound/pl.u-RRbV7YVFxxNWe3

Now that I know that cancelling your subscription nukes all the playlists, I'll try and give everyone advance warning next time!

Sorry to be a pain, but I'm probably going to let my Apple Music subscription lapse again at the end of the month as I'm not using it as much as I'd hope. I know a couple of people are following these playlists, so if it's anyone here please do copy/back them up now!

Thanks again for putting these together! i have reposted them so that the link will still be active, so if anyone on apple music is interested:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/playlist/obscure-sound/pl.u-V9D73lKhWbB2o

categorized sub lists on my page: https://itunes.apple.com/profile/rawconverter

https://youtu.be/dbq4P2_XkdI

for any Glen Velez fans out there, this looks great - a collection of tracks from his 1st three solo LPs on CMP:

https://emotional-rescue.bandcamp.com/album/sweet-season

Man Emotional Rescue is on a goddamn tear

New edition of Obscure Sound is on its way (!!!)

https://www.instagram.com/p/B5ZglqbACqd/

“Obscure Sound” record guide book is coming back again as revised edition in February 21st 2020. 200 record reviews left on first edition, and about 600 new reviews added. Further long interview with Yasuaki Shimizu, feature articles for ECM, japanese ambient/new age, spanish experimental/new age music appered. Regular reviews are inheriting unique categories likes organic, ethnic, psychedelic, spiritual, experimental, cosmic, meditative, and floating.
Please email us, if you would like to order this. Will get you back information. We accept PayPal payment.

i✧✧✧@organicmu✧✧✧.j✧

author : Chee Shimizu
deformation A5 / 248 pages (full color)
price : 2,530 JPY
ISBN978-4-8456-3409-5
publisher : Ritto Music co., ltd.
.
CONTENTS：
THE WORLD OF YASUAKI SHIMIZU（with interview）／JAPANESE AMBIENT & NEW AGE／SPECIFICITY OF ECM／ACCIDENTAL MUSIC IN SPAIN／ORGANIC／ETHNIC／PSYCHEDELIC／SPIRITUAL／EXPERIMENTAL／COSMIC／MEDITATIVE／FLOATING

It's xmas!!!

amazing, thanks for sharing

Immediately sent an e-mail to order a copy (have yet to hear back).

dead link! Need to order this. Do you remember the email address you used?

link to Chimizu's shop

Looks like a beautiful resource but... no English translation?

^^ that's my question too

i think the original edition was all in japanese apart from the titles, guessing that this will be the same

there's always word lens though (anyone ever used it?):

https://www.techradar.com/news/google-word-lens-ar-app-now-translates-japanese

I've been deliberately avoiding this book and the associated playlists because I'm afraid that it'll just take up too much of my time and probably money. Not sure if I'll be able to resist much longer.

I'm not even halfway through the ILM top 100 ambient albums yet

Looks like a beautiful resource but... no English translation?

all I see is instructions for overseas ordering?