This past fall Echoes listeners voted on 20 Icons for 20 Years of Echoes. Tonight we’ll be featuring their #3 selection on that list, Patrick O’Hearn.
Two See a list of 5 Essential Patrick O’Hearn Albums, go here.
Two see the complete list of 20 Icons of Echoes, go here.
John Diliberto ((( echoes )))
A Celtic Violinist, Electronica Tone Poem s and Jet Pilots.
You can hear an audio version of this Echoes Blog, with Anna Schaad’s music
On the surface, violinist Anna Schaad might seem like a New Age artist with Loreena McKennitt aspirations. Her first three albums often found her in renaissance garb on the covers, with titles like “Raven in the Meadow,” “Roll in the Heather” and “The Journey.” Given all that, you have to wonder what’s happening on a track called “Flyboy” with electronic drones and the cockpit chatter of pilots.
Anna Schaad: Yes, there’s, you’re gonna hear the pilots up in the air talking, um, their navy talk in the background here. And a little bit of a, an F-16 or a ES6B Prowler. Which is a very loud jet that flies, flies the friendly skies above us.
You’ll have to search long and hard to find a New Age or even modern instrumental album, that has any kind of imagery based in the military. It probably takes a musician married to a Navy pilot to pull that off, and Anna Schaad has done it on her latest album, Dream Within a Dream. It’s a love song to her husband of 4 years, lieutenant commander Jeff Montgomery.
Anna Schaad: It was written last year when my husband, who’s a Navy pilot, was away for seven months. We’d had deployments before. I’ve been married to him now for four years. But seven months was the biggest, longest time we’d been apart. And when you’re apart from someone, boy, that’s a great time to especially as an artist. Nothing like a little angst to fuel you creative process. And so, yeah, a lot of the songs are kind of a tribute to him.
Blonde and blue eyed, with a slight crook in her nose that gives her that sassy look of Ellen Barkin, Anna Schaad is dressed down in jeans and a pale pink sleeveless shirt. She’s a Pacific Northwest girl born and bred and currently lives in Bellingham, north of Seattle. She started out as a classical musician, but got sidetracked by celtic music.
Anna Schaad: Learning Celtic made me break out of my classical, mode. And I love the classical mode but it’s just different and it adds a whole another dimension to your playing.
Her first three albums are heavily Celtic-influenced, but she took another turn with her 2009 CD, Dream Within a Dream.
Anna Schaad: What happened was I heard the Buddha Bar series of ambient techno. The really low down tempo techno that’s got lush sounds from around the world and lots of different components to it. But very, very laid back but I got hooked on those hip hop rhythms and just the feel of it. And I said, “That’s the direction I want to go.
Anna Schaad & Jeff Montgomery @ Echoes
Dream Within a Dream is a mix of electronica, world music, a touch of Celtic and lots of Anna Schaad’s violins. She’s got a bunch of them, from electric to acoustic.
Anna Schaad: I have a lot of them. Yeah, there’s a lot of instruments under my bed. Don’t tell anybody [laughs]. That’s where I put ‘em when I’m not using ‘em.
When they aren’t under her bed, they’re stacked up into orchestras of strings on her albums.
Anna Schaad: On my, my last album before this, The Journey, it has pretty orchestral, in fact that’s the most, most orchestral of my first three ones. And I did do that, by layering many violins. Sort of like Enya layered many, many voices for her thing maybe, and I was frustrated with that cause it still doesn’t give you that symphonic sound. So, combining that with really good orchestral synth patches is where, this gave me a more orchestral sound.
Although she wanted to get away from her classical background, it finds it’s way back in on tracks like “And Then She Flew.”
Anna Schaad: Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” is my, my number one string piece. I used to listen to it on my parents’ record player every day after school and weep on the floor. [laughs] I guess I’m a little bit of a sap. But that’s an incredible piece. And, there is actually a little tribute to Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” in that song.
For Anna Schaad, every song is a story and her violins are the perfect storytellers.
Anna Schaad: Violin, for me, is a story telling instrument. In fact I used to do a program called The Talking Fiddle. And I think that’s the gist of it really. It’s a talking instrument. It’s telling a story. You think, just because it doesn’t have lyrics it doesn’t have a story. But they do.
Perhaps apropos of that, her album title comes from one of the greatest storytellers ever, Edgar Allen Poe. You can hear Anna Schaad’s stories on her latest CD, Dream Within a Dream.
John Diliberto ((( echoes )))
Americana Pulls Up Its Roots
You can hear an audio version of this Blog with music
Americana is a genre that usually refers to rustic music with roots in heartland sounds from folk, blues and country. Looking back on 2009, Americana emerged in some unusual locations on Echoes, including jazz, the avant-garde and electronica. My top three albums for 2009 (see Top Ten List) are very different, but all are dipping into a new stream of 21st century Americana.
At the top, Moby’s Wait for Me, an album of modern hymns, mournful laments and deep blues. He mixes major key instrumentals that roil in undertows of texture with songs that ask the big questions in a personal way. On his album Play, Moby came to renown sampling archival gospel and blues field recordings. On Wait for Me, he’s absorbed that sound into his own, wholly original music.
Bill Frisell has been infusing his jazz improvisations with country twang and modalities since his 1997 album, Nashville. His 2009 album, Disfarmer was named for a rustic photographer in the early 20th century. On Bill Frisell’s evocation of Disfarmer, you can feel the humidity and smell the Delta soil of Arkansas where the title character lived. Playing his Fender Telecaster and mixing pedal steel guitar with chamber strings, Bill Frisell made a masterpiece of Americana Chamber music.
Jon Hassell is the least obvious in his Americana influences, but the maverick trumpeter is tapping a vein of music that draws on swamp blues and jazz, transmuting it through 21st century electronic manipulation on his album, Last Night The Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street, an album title that challenged many a critic’s word count. In the 1980s Hassell created a genre called Fourth World Music but in the oughts, he’s mixing laptops, layered compositions and live sound processing. It’s a cyber-merging of Hassell’s heroes like Duke Ellington and Gil Evans, along with Arvo Pärt, tuning in signals from space.
In 2009, Jon Hassell, Bill Frisell and Moby, took Americana and propelled it into the 21st century. They borrow from roots traditions, but they’re making the music of our time. This has been an Echo Location, Soundings for New Music.
John Diliberto ((( echoes )))
Echoes Listeners pick their Top 25 Favorites from 2009
If you followed listeners choices for 200 CDs for 20 Years of Echoes top choice, then you shouldn’t be surprised at their number one selection for the Best of Echoes 2009: Loreena McKennitt’s A Midwinter Night’s Dream. The Canadian songstress of global exotica topped the poll with the kind of album that usually doesn’t even make the list, a Christmas CD, released at the end of 2008
I’m only slightly less surprised at Moby coming in a strong #2 with his album, Wait for Me an CD of the Month in July. It was at the top of 25 Essential Echoes CDs for 2009, but this mostly vocal recording isn’t the kind that usually tops Echoes polls. Being a CD of the Month and being interviewed on the show probably didn’t hurt. A great CD that will only sound better down the years.
There are a lot of other surprises on the list, most of them pleasant. It was nice to see Phil Keaggy & Jeff Johnson’s Frio Suite, Anna Schaad’s Dream Within a Dream and Robin Guthrie’s Carousel get some attention. Steve Roach continues to have a strong following, placing 2 CDs in the poll.
This is the first year that download only releases made the Top 25. Two recordings accomplished that, Under the Rose, by Ottmar Liebert & Rahim Alhaj, and 3 Cities in Dub by Bombay Dub Orchestra. With all due respect to BDO, who we love, I wonder if people confused this remix album with their 2008 CD, 3 Cities, which came in at #10 in the 2008 poll.
Over all, the listeners picked an engaging list that spanned the Echoes spectrum from acoustic to electronic, hipsters to old-veterans, avant-garde excursions to melodic singers.
You can see the complete results of The Echoes 2009 Listener Poll and you can hear it all on Monday’s Echoes, 12/14/09
Thanks to everyone who participated in the poll.
John Diliberto ((( echoes )))
For a totally different side of Harold Budd, check out this YouTube video of him in a fairly free form blowout with Bill Laswell, Jaki Liebezeit, Graham Haynes and Jah Wobble. This isn’t your father’s ambient chamber music and you wouldn’t hear it on Echoes, but wow! Harold et al: Put this out!
John Diliberto ((( echoes )))
Harold Budd’s Quiet World
You can hear an audio version of this blog with Harold Budd’s music.
When Daniel Lanois, the producer of U2, Bob Dylan and Peter Gabriel first heard Harold Budd, he hadn’t yet met him.
Daniel Lanois: For The Plateax of Mirror , I never even met him (laughter), cause he did recordings, like two track piano recordings. Some with Brian [Eno]. Some on his own. And then Brian would take these tapes and come up to Canada and we would proceed to treat them, manipulate them, and transform them the best we could. And all I ever knew about Harold was the little bit of talking that he would do preceding takes. And I always imagined this big, burley American with a strong voice. Cause he talks like, “Well Brian, I think I’ll do another one now.” And sort of like a radio announcer from the 50’s, you know talks like this and plays bongos by night. So (laughter) I had this image of a very strange, big Paul Bunyan guy who played like feathers on the piano.
Daniel Lanois, along with Brian Eno, produced Harold Budd’s early albums, The Plateax of Mirror and The Pearl, making the pianist a legend in the ambient world. Yet he started out as a jazz drummer in the 1950s, then became a student of Schoenberg style serialism. Against that backdrop, Harold Budd revolted the only way he could, by making that he called, “pretty music.”
Harold Budd: I will tell you at the time to use the word pretty music was kind of a political statement. It was against the received wisdom of what avant guard music was at the time which was confrontational and purposely without….ugly is what I call it. I just wanted candy. I was not expressing my inner being. I was just not doing anything except trying to make it as devastatingly pretty as I possibly could.
He’s done that on a series of albums, including The White Arcades, The Room and Lovely Thunder. Harold Budd takes an unassuming, intuitive approach to a music that’s about the space between the notes. Sitting at a piano in a studio, he plays a chord.
Harold Budd: If I play a chord, let’s say this one. [Plays] Okay you have this sort of unstable thing happening down here and I let that have a life of it’s own and where does it got from there [plays] Perfectly nice sound on it’s own. Has no relationship to the one before it and my job as a performer is to make sure they occur at the right time.
I’ve been in many of Harold Budd’s homes over the last 25 years, but I only saw a piano once, covered with books and papers.
Harold Budd: The piano is aesthetically awful. It is an ugly thing. Form follows function perfectly and it is just awful.
Yet he plays it so beautifully. In the new millennium, Harold Budd, now aged 73, continues composing. He’s released recent collaborations with Robin Guthrie and Clive Wright, and authored a few solo piano albums, most recently, a download release called Perhaps. Harold Budd will be playing solo piano live on Echoes on Tuesday, December 15. This has been an Echo Location, Soundings for New Music.
John Diliberto ((( echoes )))
Portishead are releasing a brand new track – “Chase the Tear” for Amnesty International.
Chase the Tear is a slice of deep retro synth pop full of analog drive and of course the serene anguish of singer Beth Gibbon. This isn’t a throw-away track but deeply felt performance with a very moody performance video to go with it.
I could’ve done without the edge of the cliff ending though.
Portishead – Chase The Tear from Mintonfilm on Vimeo.
The track will be aired first in the UK on Zane Lowe’s BBC Radio 1 show (7-9pm) on 9 December on the eve of international human rights day (10 December) and similarly on radio stations around the world.
It will be available as an exclusive download single from 7 digital (http://www.7digital.com/portisheadamnesty) from 10 December, with all earnings going towards Amnesty’s human rights work and all rights given to the organisation.
A video of Portishead performing ‘‘Chase the Tear’’ will also be available from 10 December at: www.amnesty.org.uk/portishead and at www.portishead.co.uk
John Diliberto ((( echoes )))
25 ESSENTIAL ECHOES CDS FOR 2009
We’ve sorted through some 2000 CDs and downloads that came into Echoes in the last year and we’ve picked our favorite CDs for 2009. You can vote for your’s in the Best of Echoes 2009 Poll. Deadline is 9AM, December 11.
Overall, the mood of 2009 on Echoes was atmospheric and electronic. In fact, 22 of our 25 selections had some kind of electronic grounding. Matthew Schoening plays cello but uses loops, violinist Anna Schaad uses electronica backings. Even The Beyman Bros‘ Memories of Summer as a Child, based in folk stylings and instruments, was framed with an electronic sheen.
Only three albums bucked the trend, relying on purely acoustic or simply amplified instruments for their sound: Ablaye Cissoko & Volker Goetze’s serenely beautiful album of trumpet, kora and vocal duets, Sira; Bill Frisell’s chamber Americana on Disfarmer; and Leo Abrahams’ multi-layered acoustic instruments on The Grape and the Grain which I called “a walk through classically arranged forests, Americana-dusted plains and English folk-fed streams.”
But music triggered by electronica designs dominated our list, starting with our number one selection, Moby’s Wait for Me, a CD of the Month in July. Ironically, it’s his most rustic and rootsy album to date. It was also his most personal and soul searching with heartbreaking melodies and singers who sounded both lost and full of wisdom beyond their years. Moby is one of the few musicians who can reference old gospel and blues on “Pale Horses” as well as German electro-rocker Michael Rother and Neu on “Scream Pilots.”
Just as heartbreaking as Moby’s album was Western Sci-Fi by Loner. I think Loner A.K.A. Geoff Smith’s album title and performance name are a little unfortunate, but this was one of my most played CDs of the year. It’s an album for being in and out of love, the electronica child of Nick Drake.
Other highlights for me include Jon Hassell’s deeply ambient and intricate Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street, certainly the longest title of the year. His live set at World Cafe Live was one of the highlights of 2009. Solar Fields, A.K.A. Magnus Birgesson from Sweden dropped his best album yet with the darkly textured electronics of Movements and Jeff Johnson, a longtime Echoes favorite, may have made his most perfect album, teaming up with Phil Keaggy on the interior cinema of Frio Suite, an album that charts inner landscapes even more than the natural landscapes of its title inspiration. That was a CD of the Month selection for October.
There are several new comers to the Essential Echoes list. Aerosol, from Denmark takes a shoegaze approach to electronica on one of the surprise albums of 2009, Airborne. The Mandrake Project’s A Miraculous Container was one of the most invigorating discs of the year, full of intricate compositions, detailed atmospheres and lyrical playing that nod to progressive rock, minimalism and electronica. Matthew Schoening rose above the crowd of looping cellists, again with lyrical compositions and violinist Anna Schaad was a real treat with Dream Within A Dream, a surprisingly sophisticated album of electronica, world music and violin. Rhian Sheehan’s Standing in Silence, a haunting album of music box melodies, Arvo Pärt moods and ambient electronics was a delightful gift from New Zealand.Surprisingly, all of those artists had previous recordings out, some going back nearly a decade, yet they only came across the Echoes transom this year.
I could comment on all 25 CDs, but I already have written about most of them in the Echoes Blog. There’s not a CD on here that didn’t make a significant impression and illustrate serious artistic intent. This is a combined list from the Echoes creative staff of Jeff Towne, Kimberly Haas and myself. We generally reached consensus, although I will say that Bluetech’s follow-up to Sines and Singularities, The Divine Invasion, would’ve been high on my list with its electronically pivoting melodies that spin in and around your head across elliptical chromium grooves.
Go see the complete list of 25 Essential Echoes CDs for 2009.
Then go vote in the Echoes 2009 Poll. Pick your 3 favorite CDs of the year and you’ll hear them in 25 Top Echoes CDs for 2009 on Monday, December 14. You can also win a 16gig iPod Nano, the Top 5 CDs or a copy of Still: Echoes, the Echoes Living Room Concerts Volume 15. That would’ve topped the essential list but we want to maintain our humility. So vote now. The poll closes Friday morning, December 11.
Just in case there is any confusion there are three Best Of lists on Echoes.
1-John Diliberto’s Top Ten Albums and Top Ten Songs for 2009 These are my personal favorite CDs, irrespective of genre or Echoes.
2-25 Essential Echoes CDs for 2009
These are the Echoes CDs picked by the Echoes staff of myself, Kimberly Haas and Jeff Towne
3-The Best of Echoes 2009
These are the CDs voted on by the Echoes audience. You can join them here.
John Diliberto ((( echoes )))
WITF, 89.5 FM, the Echoes afffiliate in Harrisburg, PA, (Saturday 9pm-Sunday 8AM) just ran an interview piece with me talking about the show and our latest CD, Still: Echoes which is a featured CD at Borders in Harrisburg . It’s on a segment called The Creative Zone produced by Cary Burkett.
You can hear it on their website at www.witf.org
And while you’re there, don’t forget to vote in the 2009 Echoes Top 25 Poll. You could win an iPod Nano and more.
John Dilibert0 ((( echoes )))
Robin Guthrie Heads up Echoes Top 25 for November
As expected, Robin Guthrie’s Carousel leads the Echoes Top 25 for November. It was our Echoes CD of the Month for November. If you haven’t heard it yet, it’s a definitive album from a musician who has defined post-shoegaze ambient guitar.
Also on the list is another great collection from the French Ultimae label. Imaginary Friends is a meticulously curated collection with some of our fave electronica artists including Rena Jones, Solar Fields and Aes Dana. I especially love the track by Murya.
And welcome Kevin Keller, Anna Schaad, Richard Bone, Peter Janson and Kori Linae Carothers into the top ten. Keller’s In Abstentia is some quintessential ambient chamber music and Anna Schaad’s Dream Within A Dream keeps growing on me more and more. A fine violinist with great, evocative tunes and a nice sonic touch.
Check out the entire Echoes Top 25 for November here.
And while you’re there, don’t forget to vote in the 2009 Echoes Top 25 Poll. You could win an iPod Nano and more.
John Diliberto ((( echoes )))
