Tangerine Dream Headlines Moogfest 2011.

MOOGFEST 2011, OCTOBER 28-30 IN ASHEVILLE, NC, ANNOUNCES INITIAL LINEUP!

THE FLAMING LIPS, PASSION PIT, STS9, GHOSTLAND OBSERVATORY, CRYSTAL CASTLES, CHROMEO, BATTLES, UMPHREY’S MCGEE, MAYER HAWTHORNE & THE COUNTY, M83, TIM HECKER, TORO Y MOI, AUSTRA, MATTHEW DEAR, GOLD PANDA & more to play this year’s festival.

In a battle of diametrically opposed electronics, German electronic/spacerock explorers TANGERINE DREAM to present exclusive US performance while punk/electronic iconoclasts SUICIDE to perform their legendary first album in its entirety. Electronic pioneer HANS-JOACHIM ROEDELIUS from Cluster will perform solo. This was a fantastic festival last year and this one looks even more Echoes Effective! You can read reviews of that here.

MoogFest 2010 MoogFest Day 1: No Devo, MGMTdoes Karaoke

MoogFest 2010 #MoogFest Day 2: A Massive Night with Massive Attack

MoogFest 2010 MoogFest Final Day:DJ Spooky, Hot Chip

MoogFest 2010 MoogFest Final Take

WEEKEND PASSES ON SALE SATURDAY, JUNE 4, AT 12:00 NOON EASTERN AT WWW.MOOGFEST.COM Here’s the press blurb:

June 1, 2011, Asheville, NC – AC Entertainment is proud to announce the initial lineup for Moogfest 2011, the annual festival of electronic and visionary music, celebrating the innovative spirit of Bob Moog, inventor of the Moog synthesizer. Taking place Oct. 28 – 30, in beautiful Asheville, NC, Moogfest’s Halloween harvest of musical delights builds on the tremendous success of last year’s reinvention of the Moogfest concept in the city that Bob Moog called home. This year’s Moogfest lineup highlights a remarkable synergy of classic electronic music pioneers, contemporary groundbreaking artists, and young upstarts who are further pushing musical boundaries. ‘70s innovators, including Tangerine Dream, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Suicide, will present rare US performances as they join a lineup that includes the Flaming Lips, Passion Pit, STS9, Ghostland Observatory, Crystal Castles, Chromeo, Battles, Umphrey’s McGee, Mayer Hawthorne & The County, M83, Holy F**k, Matthew Dear, Twin Shadow, Toro y Moi, The Naked And Famous, Tim Hecker, Anika, Austra, Causing A Tiger, and Gold Panda, with many others still to be announced. The final Moogfest 2011 lineup will ultimately feature performances by over 60 internationally acclaimed artists in numerous venues throughout downtown, including the Asheville Civic Center Arena, the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, and world-renown Orange Peel Social & Pleasure Club. The festival will also host workshops, talks, interactive experiences and art exhibitions and installations. “Last year’s reinvented Moogfest – the first to take place in Asheville – was an amazing experience – and the response from artists and fans alike was extraordinary,” says AC Entertainment founder, Ashley Capps. “We’re very excited and inspired to build upon that success for the 2011 festival.” Weekend passes for Moogfest 2011 will go on sale on Saturday, June 4, at 12 Noon Eastern exclusively at http://www.moogfest.com

www.moogfest.com, for more information.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Radio Massacre International

Musical Children of Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream  Improvise Electronic Dreams.

You can hear an audio version of this blog with RMI’s music

Radio Massacre International @ Echoes

The English band called Radio Massacre international has been around for a long time. How long? Steve Dinsdale says the trio made their first recordings on cassette, taping hours of jam sessions.  In fact, when we visited them in London in 2006, dozens of them sat in a pile in Duncan Godard‘s living room.

Steve Dinsdale: It was really like a noise making session rather than anything constructive, but it was just like how much noise could we make with cassette decks and really basic keyboards.  And that, that, I was actually listening to one of these things that we’ve done, and the name literally just sort of popped in, into to my head, you know, and I thought oh we’ll call this, we’ll call it Radio Massacre International.

Radio Massacre International is Steve Dinsdale on keyboards and drums, Duncan Godard on keyboards and bass and Gary Houghton on guitar.  They’re often compared to Tangerine Dream, but they’re more likely to cite space rock bands like Hawkwind, Gong and especially Pink Floyd.  Their 2007 album, Rain Falls in Grey, is a tribute to the late Pink Floyd founder, Syd Barrett. It started as just another RMI jam.

Steve Dinsdale: The opening track on Rain Falls in Grey, that was an improvisation.   That actually happened spontaneously days after Syd actually passed away.  You know, we didn’t actually know what we were doing but to me it sounded like it was a tribute and I actually played the drums from “Astronomy Domine” when the drums come in because I felt that’s what we were actually doing.

Radio Massacre International plays electronic music the old fashioned way, with their fingers.  You’ll find no computers on an RMI stage.  Instead they use a mixture of vintage synthesizers, mellotrons and digital keyboards to erect their sound.  They’ll also often turn off the keyboards and become a psychedelic power trio with guitar, bass and drums. Either way, the only thing agreed upon beforehand is the key signature and beats per minute, maybe.

Duncan Godard:  Improvising is just, it’s more fun, I think, and a better way to express yourself than playing the same tune over and over again.
Steve Dinsdale:  So, we stick to the same ethos of improvisation but anything goes.  So, every time we set up, we were able to create something new.  So, we say our album is sort of diary entries, really, sort of ongoing diary entries for the band.

Radio Massacre International @ Echoes

You can hear the improvisational ways of Radio Massacre International on their new double CD called Time and Motion on Cuneiform records.  The band will play live on Echoes this coming Monday, April 26.  This has been an Echo Location, Soundings for New Music.

You can check out Radio Massacre International’s few dozen CDs on their website.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

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Tangerine Dream Echoes Podcast

The Tangerine Dream Echoes Feature: Synths, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll is available for download.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Before Tangerine Dream: The Ones

Before there was Tangerine Dream, there was a group called The Ones with Dream founder Edgar Froese.    I’d never heard them, but courtesy of synthesist Paul Ellis, I found this track up on YouTube.  This is from the only single that they released and it’s pure “Green Tambourine” and “Incense & Peppermints”-style psychedelic pop.  In a bit of foreshadowing, they use “Tangerine” and “Dream” in the lyrics .  I believe the blond guy sitting down is Edgar Froese.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Iggy Pop on Tangerine Dream’s Heavenly Music

During Tuesday’s Fresh Air, punk icon Iggy Pop had the following exchange with Terry Gross while talking about this many near-death experiences.

Iggy Pop: One time I did actually hear the trumpets and the celestial choir and all that stuff, and it was pretty insipid.

Later in the interview:

Terry Gross: You said during one of these near death experiences that you heard the celestial choirs and the music was insipid.  Can you tell us more about what you heard.  As a musician and a rocker it’s kind of interesting to hear.

Iggy Pop: It sounded like a Tangerine Dream album

Iggy Pop & Terry Gross: [laugh knowingly]

Iggy Pop: It was like ahhhoooohhhaaaahhhh, and boop-boop-boop.  It was kind of like that.  I don’t remember the melody.

I guess that makes Iggy’s rendition of “Autumn Leaves,” rendered like Leonard Cohen on Quaaludes, the sound at the doors of hell.  You can hear it on his CD, Preliminaires.

With all due respect to the influential music Iggy has made, I’m wondering how much stock I should put in the perceptions and recollections of a drug-addled rocker in the throes of an overdose who used to cut his chest on stage while exposing himself.

Besides, what was he expecting at the gates of heaven, “I Want to Be Your Dog?”

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Echo Location: Vic Hennegan, Tangerine Dream’s Space Child

Artists like Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze  did have musical children and among them is a musician named Vic Hennegan. He makes a music born of technology and reveling in spacious rhythms and layered timbres.

(You can hear an audio version of this blog, with music.)

Vic Hennegan in Echoes LRC 2006

Vic Hennegan is an imposing figure, tall, athletically built with a dark brown complexion and a shaved head covered by a bandana.  He grew up in a black community in Philadelphia, but even as a child, his mother took him to psychedelic ballrooms like the Electric Factory and his very first concert was the Beatles in 1966 at JFK Stadium.

That might explain why Vic Hennegan had a problem connecting with black culture. He tried getting into the soul sounds that his sister and friends enjoyed.

Vic Hennegan at Echoes Living Room 2008

Vic Hennegan: I decided, I guess I was about 12 years old, I was going to be into black music. Because you know I’m black, I should be into black music, you know, so I was watching Soul Train, I was learning how to do the Soul Train dances and I was listening to the O’Jays and everybody, because that’s where I should be right? And it just didn’t work for me.

He realized the Beatles turned him on more than the O’Jays and he started playing guitar. But his musical direction was launched when he heard the space music put out by Philadelphia radio station WXPN. He actually listened to me spinning records there in the 1970s and 80s.

Vic Hennegan: I’ve always loved electronic music, it’s, just been a part of me since I discovered in like the mid to late 70s, thanks to you. You and the shows you produced were my biggest influences. I listened to Star’s End and Diaspar and it changed my life.

You can hear that influence on his latest album, Aqua Vista. Although it’s composed on computer with virtual synthesizers, the sound is vintage space music, but updated. You can hear homages to his music roots on songs like “Seascapes.”

Vic Hennegan - Aqua Vista

Vic Hennegan: You can definitely hear my Berlin influence coming in on that one and that was done on purpose, sort of my way of going back to my roots, you know, like Eric Clapton going back and doing a blues album, sort of like me going back to my roots and saying “Thank you guys.”

Vic Hennegan’s latest space music opus is called Aqua Vista. It’s named for the street he lives on in LA, but it takes a trip into oceanic space. This has been an Echo Location, Soundings for New Music.  audio version

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Ancient Echo: A Return to Galaxie Cygnus-A with Robert Schröder

Despite titles like “Alpha Centauri” and “Fly and Collision of Comas Sola,” in spite of covers that seemed blown out of distant nebulae and regardless of  music that, well, just listen to it, Edgar Froese always claimed that Tangerine Dream didn’t make space music.   Robert Schröder‘s Galaxie Cygnus-A, however, is a space music album in every sense. It takes its inspiration, and reputedly some of its sonic pallette, from radio wave transmissions from the title galaxy.  We tune it in tonight, October 21, on Echoes.

Robert Schröder

Schröder put this album length epic together for the 1982 Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria as a multimedia collaboration with visual artist Michael Weisser who went on to form the space music band, Software.

While everyone seems to be reissuing every electronic fart and burp they ever recorded, Galaxie Cygnus-A, released in a limited edition on Klaus Schulze’s Innovative Communications label, has never been issued on CD. That makes it a true lost star in the constellation of classic ’70s Berlin school electronics, even if it was recorded in 1982.

Schröder created an electronic symphony that traverses beatless spacescapes swept by sustained chords and electronic bursts, dotted by sample and hold patterns and squiggly sounds that dart through the spectrum like cyber-gnats. But it also has moments of propulsive, hypnotic rhythms . This was recorded a fraction of a second before samplers and digital synthesis were omnipresent, so the sounds are analog and many of them come from instruments that Schröder designed himself. An ominous pizzicato riff stalks through a dark twilight landscape in the second movement, sounding like a string pluck with a percussive attack and dampened decay, but it’s purely electronic. Schröder swirls electronic sounds around it, while improvising a reedy synth lead line.

Side two is centered by a waltz-like sequencer pattern counterpointed by a harpsichord arpeggio line and a sound like a sword whipping past your ears. Schroder patiently creates a slowly evolving balancing act floating in space. The original album had a locked groove at the end of each side that ran out into the hiss and gurgle of white noise or radio transmissions.

There’s a question whether the sounds are actually signals from the galaxy picked up by a radio telescope or if it’s simply white noise. That’s the claim of Klaus D. Mueller, the publisher and de facto manager of Klaus Schulze, who started Innovative Communications.

Klaus D. Mueller: This “Galaxy” hook (sending and receiving sounds from the Galaxy so-and-so) was a fake (Weisser’s speciality) made especially for a live show at the “Ars Electronica” in Linz, Austria, in the early eighties. These “live” sounds, allegedly coming from this Galaxy, was simply a prerecorded tape with “white noise.” (Later, someone showed me a letter from Weisser where he mentions this technical detail….,)

However, in an email Robert Schröder sent to me, he disputes this assertion.

Robert Schröder: The noise at the beginning and between a few tracks of Galaxie-Cygnus-A is
original space noise from these radio galaxie. The noise was received and
recorded by the big radio telescope in Effelsberg (Eifel /Germany).
It is not true what K.D.M. says. 

You can’t get Galaxy Cygnus-A at this time, but someone on YouTube put pictures to the best movement from that work.

 

Robert Schröder was from the second generation of German space musicians, a decade or more younger than Klaus Schulze and most members of Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk. He started out building his own electronic gear which looked and sounded a lot like the Moog and Arp synthesizers out at the time. He came under the wing of electronic pioneer Klaus Schulze when Schroder asked the synthesist to be the godfather of his son, Klaus. Schulze signed him to his Innovative Communications label and he went on to record several albums, including his debut, the acoustically tinged Harmonic Ascendant which mixed cello and acoustic guitar with his electronics and the chromium sequencer timbres of Floating Music. He’s put out several more albums and also recorded with the more pop oriented electronics of Double Fantasy, which turned into Dancing Fantasy, and now its called, Food for Fantasy, a project of diminishing returns and increasing corniness.

We’ll feature music from Robert Schröder’s Galaxy Cygnus-A in an Ancient Echo this Tuesday, October 21

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Genuflections and Reflections at Ash Ra Tempel

I always thought of Manuel Göttsching, who records under his own name and more famously as Ashra and Ash Ra Tempel, as the most soulful of the Berlin Trinity:  Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel.

His compositions had a warmth the others lacked and his guitar leads flitted between dangerous micro-second precision on Inventions for Electric Guitar and sensual psychedelic trips into ecstacy on New Age of Earth and Blackouts.

When you wait more than three decades before you get a chance to see an artist, expectations can be high. That was the case for the three-quarter full house that sat in the pews of St. Mary’s Church in Philadelphia, ready to genuflect before the 55-year old musician. Produced by The Gatherings, this was only Göttsching’s second US performance ever. His first was the night before in a rain-drenched outdoor event at the Lincoln Center in New York

Göttsching opened with a 45 minute opus called “Die Mulde.” Originally composed for an art installation called 34 Mirrors R.S.V.P. by Mercedes Engelhardt,  Göttsching projected a video of the original event where he was playing in a field with large mirrors, performing the same score he was now playing live in the church.  With a film crew at St. Mary’s to capture the concert,  Göttsching was being filmed in the church, playing in front of an 11-year old video of him playing at the original event . Given the mirror theme of the video, it seemed appropriate but also part of the consensual illusion the audience agreed upon, accepting that Manual Göttsching was playing live, when in fact, this was a Music Minus One performance with virtually everything coming off the computer. It was a prerecorded event of a pre-recorded event ready to be recorded once again.

Most of the music came off of Göttsching’s laptop,  while he occassionally played some repetitive arpeggios or long chords on the synthesizer. He even soloed slightly. But rhythms, percussion, sequencer patterns and synth pads were all completely pre-recorded. Only when Göttsching strapped on his Gibson SG did the music come to some kind of life that was in the moment. Göttsching is a deft guitarist with a light touch on the strings and expressive use of pitch bends and delays. Hearing him play guitar live made me wish he’d just shut down the computer and wail.  His concluding guitar solo to “Die Mulde” and his gentle riffing on “Midnight on Mars” revealed the possibilities of a truly live Manuel Göttsching concert.

I must admit that the last piece sucked me in with its cycling sequencer groove and Göttsching’s matching, understated arpeggiated guitar lead that seemed to chase its own tail in a hypnotic spiral. But I’ve heard this same effect done live with Steve Reich‘s “Music for 18 Musicians” and Terry Riley‘s tape loops, all performed in real time without pre-recorded sounds.  And Göttsching himself has done it with the live version of E2-E4 performed with the Zeitkratzer Ensemble. And for all that, while  E2-E4 is lauded as some kind of seminal dance record, it is under-rated as a masterpiece of minimalist composition and cyclical design.

Manual Göttsching has made important music that still sounds fresh every time I hear it. The process works on a recording, but a live performance is a different beast.   Nevertheless, most of the audience seemed thrilled at the opportunity to hear a carbon copy that was often like an actor playing his role live while the other characters were on film.   Actually, that’s an interesting concept.  Someone must have done that already.

 John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Arrested Musical Development: The 60s are over, the 70s too.

The midsummer of 2008 has been a trip down Memory Lane for live concerts. In the last two weeks, I’ve seen, or will be seeing, Alex De Grassi, Return to Forever, King Crimson and Manuel Göttsching/Ashra , all acts who came to their greatest renown in the 1970s.  It got me wondering about our penchant for both over-glorifying the past while also about acknowledging music that withstands the capriciousness of popular tastes.

In the midst of an Echoes Chamber session with Return to Forever guitarist, Al Di Meola, the 54-year-old musician went into a subdued rant about the music we heard as kids.  “We grew up in the greatest era ever, the 60s,” he proclaimed. “We still love the music we listened to when we were kids.  Our kids aren’t going to be able to say that. They’re going to be listening to the music we listened to when they get older.”

There is some truth to what he said, at least in regards to pop music. Certainly the music of the 60s and early 70s continues to hang on, powered by classic rock stations and turned into dogma by places like The School of Rock. But there’s also Rock of the 70s and Rock of the 80s format radio stations and I’m sure that 30 years from now, there will be a Rock of the 2000s format. I think every generation holds on to the music they heard in their teens and college years: 60s acid rock, 70s progressive rock, 80s punk, 90′s grunge.

Di Meola is mostly referring to pop music, because otherwise, he’s continued to explore new sounds and technology throughout his career as a listener and creator. But a nostalgic aroma was ever-present at the Return to Forever show I saw at the Mann Music Center in Philadelphia. I was wondering why RTF en mass felt it was necessary to wave the flag for “live” music and rail against iPods and YouTube to a full house of some 4,000 people. And Chick, baby, despite your claims that RTF got no radio airplay in the 70s, I know they got boatloads of spins from commercial jazz stations that were still around then, including WRVR in New York and WWDB in Philadelphia. College stations, like WXPN in Philadelphia, played this music to death and got RTF many of their fans, as evidenced by the 50-something demographic dominating the reunion audiences.  RTF’s performance thrilled those fans.  They didn’t play any new compositions other than the opening tune-up piece, and except for a mangled version of “Romantic Warrior,” they stuck to the recorded versions of most of them pretty faithfully, including the same somewhat dated synthesizer sounds that Corea used.

.Alex de Grassi’s audience was substantionally smaller, but they to, were thrilled to hear this veteran of the finger-style guitar renaissance at Sellersville Theater.   Like RTF, much of his set was drawn from older material made during his glory years at Windham Hill Records. It was good seeing Alex playing solo, although nothing new was being revealed, something I wouldn’t say for his world fusion DeMania trio.

I’m hopeful, but not expectant for Manuel Göttsching who performs in Philadelphia and New York over the weekend of August 15th. I know that he plans on playing classic music from Inventions for Electric Guitar  and New Age of Earth up through E2-E4. The most recent piece he’s reported to play, Die Mulde, dates back to 1997 and that’s very much in the 1970s sequencer style.  However, I’m still looking forward to that show, since Göttsching, like Klaus Schulze, has never played in the US.   It’s music I’ve never heard performed live, but I’m not expecting any revelations. It will probably be like seeing RTF, who I also didn’t get to see in the 70s. (BTW, can somebody update Ashra’s Wikipedia entry? It is woefully skimpy and inaccurate).

Of them all, King Crimson has continued exploring new dimensions in their heavy metal future shock sound. I’ve seen them twice in this millennium and both were exhilarating, ear-shredding performances full of precision, spontaneity and new music.  While their audience will certainly be from the same demographic that will attend De Grassi, RTF and Ashra shows, Krimson’s music continues to be exploratory, without pandering .

I too, love the artists of my formative years, and Echoes also maintains a loyalty to the pioneers we played early on like Will Ackerman, Tangerine Dream, Andreas Vollenweider, George Winston and Klaus Schulze. That music, along with Hendrix and the Beatles, Coltrane and Miles, Ultravox and Siouxsie & the Banshees, Philip Glass and Steve Reich  is all in my musical DNA.

But I don’t want to exist in a musical past like some artists and audiences who are in an arrested state of musical development, living a terminal adolescence with the music that informed their youths. I don’t want to think that the best music I’ll experience for the rest of my life came out 30 or so years ago.  When I see teenagers who are enthralled by the sound and imagery of the sixties, I don’t sometimes feel validated in my youthful tastes. but just as often, I feel like telling them to listen to your own music.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

A Meeting of Icons: Klaus Schulze & Lisa Gerrard

It’s difficult when you fall out of love with an artist. We all have musicians whose work has been central to our lives, who we’ve followed from the beginning of their careers and absorbed everything they’ve released as if it were a gift from heaven. Klaus Schulze and Lisa Gerrard are like that for me. I’ve followed Klaus since Dan Kelly played me Picture Music in 1975. I remember the phone lines lit solid for all 25 minutes of “Mindphaser” when I played the Moondawn album on WXPN‘s Diaspar in 1976. Mirage and X  remain among my favorite albums. But since the mid-1980s, Klaus’s music has seemed less important, less relevant and often, just not very well crafted. In an era of tighter time constraints and shorter attention spans, he persists in creating epic works spanning 30 minutes to hours, often improvising aimlessly and endlessly on relentless sequencer patterns or glacial chords.  Klaus does not subscribe to the “less is more” concept.

   Lisa Gerrard has been a true love since the second Dead an Dance album, Spleen & Ideal.  Her singing remains singular and transcendent, despite so many imitators. I’ve written reams of praises to her, but in recent years, Gerrard has become more turgid as well. As early as The Mirror Pool and as recently as The Silver Tree  there are many transcendent moments, but I often feel like I’m sitting in church dusty and musty litanies shrouded in suffocating portent.   Lisa has abandoned the dramatic arc that marks her best work, often devolving into mood and mysticism that is often, but not always salvaged by her supralingua dialects and siren angel of a voice. 

 When I heard these two musicians were getting together on a double CD called Farscape, I hoped they’d bring out the best in each other.  The opening 22 minute opus, “Liquid Coincidence (1)” drops you into the space cathedral of their sound with Klaus laying down those big sweeping synth chords while Lisa channels Abbess Hildegard von Bingen.   It’s an auspicious start, but the gambit gets tiring at about 30 minutes into the CD,  when I realized that Klaus and Lisa were reinforcing each other’s worst tendencies, heading down the rabbit hole of unfocussed abstraction that has sucked the life out of them both in recent years. As it wears on,  Farscape begins sounding less like inspired collaboration and more like a John Cagian Indeterminacy experiment, with both musicians playing in separate rooms,  rather than a holy communion of sound.   According to Klaus’s liner notes, he created the basic tracks and Lisa came in and sang for several days.  Her performances were all reputedly one-take improvisations which isn’t necessarily bad, except they sound like it.  His synth tracks are sometimes gorgeous, occasionally rhythmic, always sweeping, yet never quite ascending to a compositional level, more like soundscapes that ebb and flow. Lisa sings across them, sending out chants and incantations, and though I can hear she’s dialed into the moment, there’s no sense of construction or flow, only a string of isolated, unmediated, unedited fragments.  Klaus lays down the big synth chords to nowhere while Lisa deploys her Gothic muse.      

I could make a case for this being an enveloping soundscape that takes you deep into an immersive world of sound where Klaus Schulze navigates a roadmap of the inner mind while Lisa Gerrard negotiates the darkest reaches of the soul, each staring into the abyss and jumping in head first. But the portentousness of it all is as lugubrious as Jabba the Hutt on Quaaludes, just prettier. 

I feel like I’ve just turned my back on the church, but the fact is, I remain a loyal fan, because I can still hear the elements of genius and soul that attracted me to both artists, I’ll be trying to edit out some choice chunks to play on Echoes, because they are there.  Meanwhile, Klaus’s early catalog has been reissued in beautiful packaging, although the decision to not remaster the recordings was Ill-advised. 

You can hear a profile of Lisa Gerrard here. 

John Diliberto (((echoes)))