New Music from Bear McCreary & The Montreal Guitar Trio
Tonight on Echoes, new music from a film nobody saw, but you’ll definitely recognize the composer. It’s Bear McCreary who scored Battlestar Galactica and The Walking Dead as well as many films. We’ll hear his soundtrack to The Nights of Badassdom. This movie was released on January 13 but looks like it went straight to video, or the internet, or wherever films go that only gross $86K. However, it stars Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones), Steve Zahn (Treme, That Thing You Do!) and Ryan Kwanten (True Blood) and the trailer looks pretty funny. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00CYP9GKE/echoes
We’ll also hear MG3, which is much cooler than saying the Montreal Guitar Trio. Their new CD is Der Prinz and they take Rush‘s epic “Tom Sawyer” and turn it into an acoustic guitar epic. You’ll hear it tonight on Echoes.
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Swedish singer-songwriter Ane Brun plays live on Echoes
Do you know what the number one most Shazammed song was during this years Superbowl? It wasn’t anything by Bruno Mars or the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Instead, it was “Don’t Leave,” a gentle song from Norwegian born and Swedish based singer-songwriter Ane Brun. We featured an interview with Ane in 2013 based on her 10 year retrospective album,Songs 2003-2013 and now, I’ve got her in the studio playing music from across her career including that Superbowl song, “This Voice” and a surprising cover of Beyoncé ‘s “Halo”. She’s joined by cellist and singer Linnea Olsson tonight on Echoes.
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Windham Hill Records hasn’t been around for many years, but their influence remains strong. Today, we’ll hear from another guitar player whose music was shaped by the recordings of Will Ackerman and Alex De Grassi. Shambhu is one of those musicians. In fact, Windham Hill founder Will Ackerman produced his album, Dreaming of Now. His actual name is Neil Vineberg but he uses Shambhu as his stage name, which was given to him by spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy. He comes into the Echoes Living Room with famed cellist Eugene Friesen from the Paul Winter Consort and windplayer Premik Tubbs. They’ll play live tonight on Echoes.
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Get the right music for your turkey repast with a special Echoes Thanksgiving show of acoustic sounds for late autumn and a live performance by SHEL, the acoustic trio of sisters from Colorado who make a beautifully charming sound on their self-titled debut.
SHEL live on Echoes
The band called SHEL is from a generation of musicians who grew up on their parents record collections. The four sisters from Colorado, ranging from 19 to 25 years old, were listening to folk music and classic rock as much as contemporary music, maybe more. They’ve created a charming and infectious sound, full of serene harmonies and playful instrumentation, but there’s also something deeper lurking in this music. On the heels of their self-titled debut album, SHEL came to echoes and gave us a glimpse into their music.
SHEL are Sarah, Hannah, Eva and Liza Holbrook. Despite their age, many of SHEL’s songs portray a sense of loss and tragedy that is beyond their years, especially from people who appear to have had an idyllic childhood full of music and a “Waltons” kind of family life. So you might wonder where the angst comes from in one of their earlier songs like “Try To Scream.”
SHEL looking serious on Echoes
“I read a lot of books by C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald,” says SHEL’s Eva Holbrook. She’s the writer and mandolin player in the band. “Actually those are some of my favorite things to do, actually to curl up and read George MacDonald because his books are so convicting. And it just reminds me that you know, no matter who you are, no matter what you’ve been through, the challenge of doing the right thing even when it’s hard, or not doing the wrong thing even when you want to do it, all of that like even in an ideal life there’s angst… you know, I’ve been in relationships that I felt really trapped in and always come out on the other side of it But that’s just how I expressed it is through music.”
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Ambient Music from Greece and Dreampop from North Jersey
Melorman, Mree and Marconi Union hold the one , two and three positions for most played albums in August on Echoes. Melorman’s Waveswas the Echoes August CD of the Month. Mree’s Winterwellis the impressive sophomore album from the 19-year old Taiwanese-Bulgarian-American singer from northern New Jersey. Her ethereal songs have stacked vocals that recall Enya and plaintive melodies that never fail to enchant. Mree leads a pack of vocal albums on the list, 12, which is the most ever in the Echoes Top 25.
Mree’s Winterwell
But ambient music abounds including the third M in our list, Marconi Union & Jah Wobble with their CD Anomic, which gets better with every listen. Then there’s the beautiful ambient chamber music Jeff Greinke. He’s a longtime favorite on Echoes and his new album Scenes from a Train is a beautiful work of acoustic chamber music that further reveals the composer in this experimental artist. And dig his label name: Infectious Music. Anyway you take it, it’s true. Here’s the Top 25 for August
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Swedish musician Jimmy Wahlsteen Channels Pop into Fingerstyle Guitar.
You can hear an Audio Version of this blog, with Jimmy Wahlsteen’s music.
On the cover of his debut album, 181st Songs, Jimmy Wahlsteen just looks too stylish to be a fingerstyle guitar slinger. GQ poses and an androgynous look aren’t the norm for the usual grizzled or blandly clean-cut anti-image approach favored by most fingerstyle players. But then you hear the impressive technique and realize he isn’t like a lot of finger-style players anyway.
Wahlsteen has all the post-Michael Hedges guitar approaches down, including two-handed tapping, playing percussion on his guitar and more. But this isn’t a simple guitar-picker’s anthem. The Swedish born musician grew up as a fan of Kiss, and has spent the first part of his young career playing on pop music sessions. He brings a keen melodic ear and arranging sensibility to his music. A song like “Suffice to Say” could be a pop ballad, with its song structure and use of electric guitar accents.
Wahlsteen can burn the house down with technique, which he does on “The Urge to Gossip,” a jazzy romp complete with horns, but he can also wax pastoral on “Carry Me,” a gentle song backed by a string trio. Wahlsteen doesn’t credit it on the album, but you can hear subtle processing effects in his playing. He introduces “Rapid Eye Movement” with a delay sound reminiscent of U2‘s The Edge and on “You Gotta Run Real Fast to Stand Still,” he uses shimmering harmonics and electric guitar shadings that exhibit his open ended approach to finger-style guitar.
The title of the CD comes from the street on which Jimmy Wahlsteen lived in New York City, 181st Street. That’s where he wrote most of an album on which he does it all, even picking out the cut you’ll like best. It’s called “It’s your Favorite.” Jimmy Wahlsteen’s 181st Songs is on Candyrat Records and it’s our favorite for January and it’s the Echoes CD of the Month. John Diliberto ((( echoes )))
Digitonal tops the Echoes Top 25 for September, and will no doubt be near the top for the next several months. But right behind is Marconi Union, topping their own record as the highest placing digital download recording on Echoes. October’s CD of the Month, Sumner McKane’s nostalgia-tinged ambient americana masterpiece, What A Great Place to be, is already near the top in September at #4. New Entries include Darshan Ambient, Jeff Pearce, General Fuzz, Anja Lechner & Vasillis Tsabropoulos , Peter Kater, and Wolfert Brederode. Over-all, another month of chilled moods and exotic grooves from across the Echoes spectrum. It’s been a good year, and it’s not over yet. You can read print reviews and hear audio reviews with music from several of them, including Sumner McKane, Digitonal, Marconi Union, Ron McFarlane, Michael Brook & Djivan Gasparyan, Ottmar Liebert, Solas, and General Fuzz.
Tonight on Echoes, new music from a film nobody saw, but you’ll definitely recognize the composer. It’s Bear McCreary who scored Battlestar Galactica and The Walking Dead as well as many films. We’ll hear his soundtrack to The Nights of Badassdom. This movie was released on January 13 but looks like it went straight to video, or the internet, or wherever films go that only gross $86K. However, it stars Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones), Steve Zahn (Treme, That Thing You Do!) and Ryan Kwanten (True Blood) and the trailer looks pretty funny. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00CYP9GKE/echoes
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