exotica Archive
22 Nov 2022
Album Reviews: David Javelosa – Atomic Odyssey! and Modern Work Volume One
David Javelosa is an inspired musician whose work is primarily synthesizer-based. But his bent, whimsical and playful approach to music results in sounds that are far from the “serious” kind […]
18 Jan 2021
Hundred-word Reviews: January 2021 #2
Here’s five more brief reviews; this time we’ve got progressive rock, powerpop, indie chamber pop, goth rock and one album that’s simply beyond easy classification. What they all have in […]
21 Aug 2020
Dan Lacksman: The Electronic System Man
This feature appeared previously in Synth and Software. — bk This pioneering synthesist has worked with Bowie, Dolby, Deep Forest, and Kraftwerk’s Florian Schneider on what could be his final […]
20 Aug 2020
Album Review: Martin Denny — Exotic Moog
Introduced in the middle 1960s, Dr. Robert A. Moog’s invention – the Moog Modular synthesizer – changed the musical landscape. Groundbreaking releases like Switched on Bach made it plain that […]
25 Apr 2018
Combo Chimbita: The (Tropical) Future is Now
New York City-based quartet Combo Chimbita plays its music in the present, but the band claims to live in the future. With an exotic and intriguing style of music the […]
06 Mar 2017
Album Review: Attilio Mineo — Man in Space with Sounds
A breathlessly earnest announcer welcomes the listener to the record as a wonderfully evocative orchestra creates an instrumental backdrop meant to evoke outer space. With the help of some gee-whiz […]
11 Aug 2014
Hundred Word Reviews for August 2014, Part 1
Some familiar names and some true obscurities are highlighted in this, the first of five sets of five capsule reviews. This week I’ll review 25 albums, arbitrarily limiting myself to […]
29 May 2014
Book Review: Joe Meek’s Bold Techniques
People like sensational stories. It’s an unfortunate fact, because the public’s focus on the superficial and lurid often obscures a deeper, nuanced story beneath. Barry Cleveland is not one of […]
22 May 2014
Album Review: Sun Ra — A Space Odyssey
As Kris Needs notes in his excellent and detailed liner notes for A Space Odyssey: From Birmingham to the Big Apple – The Quest Begins, Sun Ra was a practitioner […]
11 Jul 2013
Album Review: Various Artists — Los Nuggetz: ’60s Garage & Psych from Latin America
During the first four or five years of this new century, there existed online a thriving collector/trading community, dedicated to sharing and disseminating obscure, forgotten and occasionally never-known-about-in-the-first place music […]
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