Echoes Interview: Northcape’s Spacescapes

Hear an interview with English electronic artist Northcape tonight

Back in the early 1960s, Bell Laboratory’s inventor, Max Mathews created a lot of the early synthesizer and computer music technology.  His program called Music was one of the first for making music on computers. He predicted that in the future, anyone, musicians and non-musicians alike,  would be able to make music.  Alastair Brown is a musical grandchild of Max Mathews.  He doesn’t play keyboards.  He makes music on a computer in his home studio in England.  Using the  name Northcape, he’s received some acclaim for his post techno-electronic music.  He recently released the album, Exploration and Ascent.  Hear him talk about it tonight on Echoes.

Find your local Echoes station or streaming options here.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))
If you like Northcape, you’ll love his SunSeaSky label mate, Melorman and the album, Waves.  It’s the Echoes August CD of the Month.  Sign up for the Echoes CD of the Month Club you’ll get great CDs every month. Follow the link to the Echoes CD of the Month Club and see what you’ve been missing.

Support Echoes by becoming a member of the Echoes Sound Circle.

Think of the great artists you love on Echoes. Think of the informative interviews and exclusive live performances. Then, think of a world without Echoes. You can make sure that never happens by becoming a member of the Echoes Sound Circle.

Echoes is a non-profit 501(c3) organization just like your local public radio station. And all donations are tax deductible. You can support Echoes with a monthly donation that will barely disturb your credit card.

Join the Echoes Sound Circle and keep the soundscapes of Echoes flowing!

New Music: The Boards of Canada & Sigur Rós

Hear New Music from the Boards of Canada and Sigur Ros on Echoes tonight.

Tonight on Echoes, new music by downtempo electronic denizens, Boards of Canada, from their highly anticipated and hyped Tomorrow’s Harvest, and the latest by Sigur Rós off their new album Kveikur (Candlewick).

Below, watch Boards of Canada with “Reach for the Dead” from from Tomorrow’s Harvest.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Find your local Echoes station or streaming options here.

If you like Boards of Canada and Sigur Ros, then you’ll love the Echoes August CD of the Month, Melorman’s Waves.  Sign up for Echoes CD of the Month Club and you’ll get great CDs like Melorman’s Waves. 

Support Echoes by becoming a member of the Echoes Sound Circle.

Think of the great artists you love on Echoes. Think of the informative interviews and exclusive live performances. Then, think of a world without Echoes. You can make sure that never happens by becoming a member of the Echoes Sound Circle.

Echoes is a non-profit 501(c3) organization just like your local public radio station. And all donations are tax deductible. You can support Echoes with a monthly donation that will barely disturb your credit card.

Join the Echoes Sound Circle and keep the soundscapes of Echoes flowing!

Surf The Wave’s of Melorman’s CD of the Month

Hear A Podcast Review of Melorman’s Waves
The Echoes CD of the Month for August

If you thought the only electronic-based music coming out of Greece was from Yanni and Vangelis, then you haven’t been keeping up on a wave of electronic artists who are more plugged in to Boards of Canada’s textural melancholy than Yanni’s grandiose orchestrations. Melorman is one of those artists. That’s the parody-ready moniker of Antonis Haniotakis from Athens. He says the name refers to “melody” and “man.” He’s been at the electronic game for a few years now and his new CD, Waves, may be his signature work.

Like so many electronic artists, he’s a laptop jockey, conjuring up panoramic spaces and interior architecture on his computer. Unlike a lot of these artists, Melorman is more concerned with melody and mood than ear-bending sound design, though there is some of that as well. Each song on Waves builds like a spinning model of a molecule: melodies wrap around rhythms, cycling in counterpoint to other melodies, all against a shimmering borealis of sound.

The album has elements of those old avant-garde electronic recordings on CRI or Nonesuch, on tracks like “Heights” with a spare, dark, unmoored tone hanging in space, only here, it builds into a melodic and rhythmic soundscape.  Then there’s the subtle, almost meditative opening of “The Sky Out of Your Windows, with a quiet pulsing tone that builds with Doppler search lights sweeping through the slowly emerging theme. That quickly shifts into “Glow” with a music-box minimalist sequence riveted to a glitch-tossed groove, all moving towards a slo-mo melodic crescendo.

Melorman dials-in chilled electronica with a post-rock sound in his rhythms that aligns him with artists like The Album Leaf and Tycho. But there are no conventional guitars or strings with Melorman: he’s resolutely electronic. Sounds ricochet against his syncopated rhythms then drop out into free space on “From Now On.” Melodies trace each other like fireflies in synchronous trajectories on “Lights.” Some of his works approach minor opus status, such as “Walking on Water” which shifts between a slow loping groove and free floating classical legatos wafting up into cathedral rafters.

Melorman has been compared to Boards of Canada, and while this might be sacrilegious to their acolytes, I find Waves more satisfying than BoC’s self-consciously abstracted Tomorrow’s Harvest. Melorman’s Waves flows as naturally as the surf and pulls you in with the most melancholy undertow.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Hear an audio review of Melorman’s Waves in the Echoes Podcast.

Sign up for Echoes CD of the Month Club. With the Echoes CD of the Month Club, you get great CDs like Melorman’s Waves. Follow the link to the Echoes CD of the Month Club and see what you’ve been missing.

Support Echoes by becoming a member of the Echoes Sound Circle.

Think of the great artists you love on Echoes. Think of the informative interviews and exclusive live performances. Then, think of a world without Echoes. You can make sure that never happens by becoming a member of the Echoes Sound Circle.

Echoes is a non-profit 501(c3) organization just like your local public radio station. And all donations are tax deductible. You can support Echoes with a monthly donation that will barely disturb your credit card.

Join the Echoes Sound Circle and keep the soundscapes of Echoes flowing!

Bedroom Electronics with Northcape.

Now in the Echoes Podcast: Interview with English electronic artist Northcape

Back in the early 1960s, Bell Laboratory’s inventor, Max Mathews created a lot of the early synthesizer and computer music technology.  His program called Music was one of the first for making music on computers. He predicted that in the future, anyone, musicians and non-musicians alike,  would be able to make music.  Alastair Brown is a musical grandchild of Max Mathews.  He makes music on a computer in his home studio in England.  Using the  name Northcape, he’s received some acclaim for his post techno-electronic music.  He recently released the album, Exploration and Ascent.  Hear him talk about it in the Echoes Podcast.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Support Echoes by becoming a member of the Echoes Sound Circle.

Think of the great artists you love on Echoes. Think of the informative interviews and exclusive live performances. Then, think of a world without Echoes. You can make sure that never happens by becoming a member of the Echoes Sound Circle.

Echoes is a non-profit 501(c3) organization just like your local public radio station. And all donations are tax deductible. You can support Echoes with a monthly donation that will barely disturb your credit card.

Join the Echoes Sound Circle and keep the soundscapes of Echoes flowing!

Sign up for Echoes CD of the Month Club. With the Echoes CD of the Month Club, you get great CDs like Olivier Libauxs Uncovered Queens of the Stone Age. Follow the link to the Echoes CD of the Month Club and see what you’ve been missing.

Now you can go Mobile with Echoes On-Line. Find out how you can listen to Echoes 24/7 wherever you are on your iPhone, iPad or Droid.

Join us on Facebook where you’ll get all the Echoes news so you won’t be left behind when Dead Can Dance appear on the show, Tangerine Dream tours or Brian Eno drops a new iPad album. Or Follow us on Twitter@echoesradio

Bedroom Electronics with Northcape.

Hear an interview with English electronic artist Northcape tonight

Back in the early 1960s, Bell Laboratory’s inventor, Max Mathews created a lot of the early synthesizer and computer music technology.  His program called Music was one of the first for making music on computers. He predicted that in the future, anyone, musicians and non-musicians alike,  would be able to make music.  Alastair Brown is a musical grandchild of Max Mathews.  He doesn’t play keyboards.  He makes music on a computer in his home studio in England.  Using the  name Northcape, he’s received some acclaim for his post techno-electronic music.  He recently released the album, Exploration and Ascent.  Hear him talk about it tonight on Echoes.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Sign up for Echoes CD of the Month Club. With the Echoes CD of the Month Club, you get great CDs like Olivier Libauxs Uncovered Queens of the Stone Age. Follow the link to the Echoes CD of the Month Club and see what you’ve been missing.

Now you can go Mobile with Echoes On-Line. Find out how you can listen to Echoes 24/7 wherever you are on your iPhone, iPad or Droid.

Join us on Facebook where you’ll get all the Echoes news so you won’t be left behind when Dead Can Dance appear on the show, Tangerine Dream tours or Brian Eno drops a new iPad album. Or Follow us on Twitter@echoesradio

New Music: The Boards of Canada & Sigur Rós

New music by downtempo electronic denizens, The Boards of Canada, from their highly anticipated and hyped Tomorrow’s Harvest, and the latest by Sigur Rós off their new album Kveikur (Candlewick).

Below, watch Sigur Rós’ “Hoppipolla” from their 2005 album, Takk.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Sign up for Echoes CD of the Month Club. With the Echoes CD of the Month Club, you get great CDs like Rachel Zeffira’s The Deserters. Follow the link to the Echoes CD of the Month Club and see what you’ve been missing.

Now you can go Mobile with Echoes On-Line. Find out how you can listen to Echoes 24/7 wherever you are on your iPhone, iPad or Droid.

Join us on Facebook where you’ll get all the Echoes news so you won’t be left behind when Dead Can Dance appear on the show, Tangerine Dream tours or Brian Eno drops a new iPad album. Or Follow us on Twitter@echoesradio

Echo Location: Marconi Union’s A Lost Connection

I know, I just mentioned Marconi Union in a blog last week, but I decided to feature them in an Echo Location, Soundings for New Music, an Echoes feature heard on WXPN-FM, 88.5, in Philadelphia/Lancaster/Harrisburg.

An audio version of this Echo Location with music can also be heard.

Manchester, England was the home to some of the most seminal music of the 1970s and 80s. That’s where Jamie Crossley and Richard Talbot grew up, stoked on the Manchester born sounds of groups like Happy Mondays, the Durutti Column and Joy Division.  The two musicians met in a record store where Richard worked. He was playing his own electronic music to unsuspecting customers.  Jamie Crossley walked in, heard it and suggested a collaboration. The results have been a trio of critically acclaimed albums beginning with Under Wires and Searchlights in 2003 and Distance in 2005. 

Their latest CD, A Lost Connection continues their music of interior designs that could’ve emerged out of a Blade Runner dream, which is fitting for a band growing up in the midst industrial decay. Much of their music rises out of a droning, electronic hum, like the distant sound of a powerstation, or the rumble of a subway. But out of that hum, a pulse emerges, clicks and glitches congeal and a melody at the borders of perception rises up out of the noise like Clint Eastwood emerging out of a desert heat mirage.

You can hear echoes of ambient artists like Boards of Canada and Moby in Marconi Union and they certainly bow at the altar of ambient creator, Brian Eno. Like those artists, there’s a haunting, minor key melancholy and many of sounds seem almost a-musical, born from faulty joints, broken fittings or in the case of their new album, A Lost Connection. It’s the soundtrack for abandoned factories and dead technology, but one where sunlight is filtering through the broken glass.

Marconi Union’s Distance was released on the All Saints label, which also puts out CDs by Brian Eno, John Cale and Harold Budd. They expected their next album to come out there as well, and while they were waiting, they even recorded a second cd.  That’s a much swampier and darker effort called Beautifully Falling Apart.  But All Saints has stopped producing new music so Marconi Union decided to release the first of their two albums, A Lost Connection as a digital download from their website, marconiunion.com.  You’ll also find some free downloads on their site. 

This has been an Echo Location, soundings for new music.  Hear an Audio Version with music here.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))