I'm not trying to provoke any cosmic backlash unto me but the fact is that today is Equinox and here I am talking about a record by Oberon called Midsummer Night's Dream.

I just found it by simple hazard (I prefer to call it serendipity) and fell in love with it. It's extremely rare (I think only 150 original copies were made!) and it features some of the loveliest folk sounds you'll likely to hear in quite some time. For seasoned folk lovers, maybe you won't find here nothing new but in my opinion, it has that one ingredient that separates it from most of what you've heard so far: magic.

I especially like the treatment they made to one of Debussy's classic pieces: Syrinx. I could hear it ad eternum and imagine myself daydreaming in a meadow somewhere. Maybe I just will.

Genre-hopper extraordinaire Ryuichi Sakamoto's Smoochy album is one I find myself listening to from time to time always with a renewed sense of wonder. It's almost like I keep finding new things about it everytime I listen to it.

And this is a crucial album if you want to find out what this man's music is all about and how it got where it is today. In it are the seeds of everything he went on to do, be it his electronic explorations with Alva Noto, his acoustic albums with piano and strings, or even his ongoing romance with bossa nova and other latin american music languages. It's all here.

I'm going to leave you with one of my favorite tracks - Bibo No Aozora - one that has been reworked by him in multiple ways in the past and always successfully, which only goes to prove just how simple in their complexity his songs really are. And in this lies his greatest gift. Enjoy it.

Don't know if it's the weather but today I'm feeling a bit melancholic and somewhat depressed. So what better time to hear some good old dramatic virtuosity courtesy of german legend Klaus Nomi, right?

I don't have much more to say than what hasn't already been said about him, so I will not try to go that way. I will say this, though: he is without a peer in what he did. Noone before or after has crafted such a niche and unique corner in the history of music and we all should be thankful that he took the time and the effort to share his immense talent with the rest of the world.

Listen, then to his timeless classic, The Cold Song and while doing it, picture yourself as if living in a planet of a still undiscovered galaxy. Well, it works for me, anyway.

It's funny how you sometimes find things. I truly believe in serendipity, of good things finding a way of finding you in those very particular moments in time when you are not searching for anything in particular. The voice and rare art of Danielle Licari was one of those rare moments.

You really feel truly blessed of getting in touch with such fine artists and I hope I don't sound too corny or presumptuous when I say that the finest of the arts gets you closer to the divine. Few things are able to do that, nowadays. Owner of a crystaline and highly trained voice, Licari uses it as the most exquisitely tuned instrument throughout the tracks of this, a compilation I found while browsing for her available work on CD. It's really a shame that more of her records are not available on CD as they seem to be highly sought after and treasured by her fans.

After scoring a massive hit with Concerto Pour Une Voix (15 million copies sold worldwide!), she went on to explore her voice in the most varied of avenues, even lending her vocal abilities to movie soundtracks and popular hits of the day. I'm going to leave you with a track that is dear to my heart for it belongs to one of my favorite movies ever: Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. In case you didn't know (and I certainly didn't!), she is the singer that dubs Catherine Deneuve's singing in that movie. It all makes perfect sense to me now.