21st Century Progressive Rock Opus from Mark McGuire

Mark McGuire Creates 21st Century Progressive Rock Opus for Echoes CD of the Month

Old fans of progressive rock and space music might be forgiven if listening to Mark McGuire’s Along the Way takes them back to about 1975, calling up music like Ash Ra Tempel’s Inventions for Electric Guitar, Popol Vuh’s Seligpreisung or Can’s Soon Over Babaluma. McGuire’s heavily layered guitars with delay-driven riffs, burning solos and expansive themes would have fit perfectly in those heady times.

McGuire was in a band called Emeralds, an electronic retro-space music trio who sound like stowaways in Tangerine Dream’s Berlin studio circa 1975. But Along the Way is something different and more personal.  McGuire has hinted at this in a series of little-heard solo recordings like Get Lost and A Young Person’s Guide, but Along the Way is the culmination of these  explorations: it’s a beautifully crafted album that shifts in mood and motion.

The intricate opening suite begins as a new age meditation of acoustic guitar, meandering synthesizer, chimes, and some Asian stringed instrument sounding like a koto or pipa. Those instruments are joined by a delayed electric guitar and before you know it, you’re washed into “Wonderland of Living Things.”  It’s a Mike Oldfield-like confluence of insistent groove, cycling melodies and increasingly insistent delayed guitar riffs.

References abound on the album, like the Popol Vuh-inspired guitar picking on “Arrival Begins the Next Departure” with a trio of guitar lines that spiral up into the ether like vapor trail minarets.  Many of McGuire’s songs are built on looping delay patterns similar to those Manuel Göttsching created on  Inventions for Electric Guitar in 1975. His intricate riffs shift subtly through a song in a minimalist sleight of hand.

In the best progressive rock tradition, McGuire has grouped his compositions into a series of suites with titles like “To All Present in the Hall of Learning” and “The Age of Revealing.”  There’s an 11-page densely-packed existential treatise that goes along with the record, and each track of this primarily instrumental album has philosophical concepts to go along with them.  The guitarist has said:

“This story is an odyssey through the vast, unknown regions of the mind…the endless unfolding of psychological landscapes, leading to perpetual discoveries and expansions, in a genuinely emergent and infinite world of worlds.”

You may not be thinking of that during the intricate, pastoral weave of “In Search of the Miraculous” or the brain-searing crescendo of “The Instinct,” which forms like the isokinetic structure of a Hoberman sphere, slowly expanding until it explodes in a five minute electric guitar meltdown.

Playing all the instruments himself, including several kinds of guitars, mandolin, synthesizers, percussion, piano and more, McGuire’s opus recalls Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells in its ambitions.  McGuire brings that concept into the 21^st century and like that album some 40 years ago, Along the Way left me breathless.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))
Join the Echoes CD of the Month Club.  Mark McGuire’s Along the Way is our March CD of the Month.  You’ll get great CDs and help support Echoes at the same time.   You can do it all right here.
OR
Pick Up  TRANSMISSIONS:
THE ECHOES LIVING ROOM CONCERTS VOLUME 19

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.

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.

Echoes Goes to the Darkside

Hear an Interview with Darkside Tonight on Echoes.

Darkside @ Mountain Oasis. Photo: Diliberto

This past October I got to see the band Darkside at the Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit.  They played before an impressively large audience in the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, considering they only had one album out, Psychic.  They’re a band that favors shadows, standing in twin cones of low, smoke filled light, delivering snarling guitar leads over throbbing electronic drums and sequences like a pong game on acid. They recalled the German band Can, with their motoric grooves and free improvisation, but brought a modern DJ sensibility to their set.  It was like a rave in a bomb shelter.  Tonight on Echoes we’ll talk to Darkside’s Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington.

Check out their live set in Paris last year.  And turn it up.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Join the Echoes CD of the Month Club.  Hammock’s Oblivion Hymns is our January   CD of the Month.  You’ll get great CDs and help support Echoes at the same time.   You can do it all right here.

OR

Pick Up  TRANSMISSIONS:
THE ECHOES LIVING ROOM CONCERTS VOLUME 19

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.

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.

Darkside of the Beach Boys on Echoes Tonight

From Tonight Sky to Darkside on Echoes T0night

Darkside is a duo from where else? Brooklyn.  Electronic musician Nicolas Jaar and guitarist Dave Harrington spin out psychedelic electronica landscapes with moods that reference German avant-rockers, Can.  Catch them live if you can.  They did an amazing set at this year’s Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit.

Darkside’s  expansive, partly improvised sound is a contrast and counterpart to Tonight Sky, a project put together by Jason Holstrom in Seattle.  He combines Beach Boys-style harmonies with skyhook melodies and darker, electronica modes.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

GIVE THE GIFT OF THE ECHOES CD OF THE MONTH CLUB

Join the Echoes CD of the Month Club now and you can put David Helping and Jon Jenkins’ Found under somebodies Christmas tree.  It’s our December  CD of the Month.  You’ll get great CDs and help support Echoes at the same time.   You can do it all right here.

OR

GIVE THEM THE GIFT OF TRANSMISSIONS:
THE ECHOES LIVING ROOM CONCERTS VOLUME 19

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.

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.

Tonight on Echoes, Connections from 1967 to 2013.

60’s Psych-Progressions, 70’s Krautrock, New World Fusion
and Ambient Chamber music Tonight on Echoes.

I must be feeling a bit nostalgic today.  I find myself going back to some of my earliest musical influences and to the early days of Echoes.  From the 1960s, I’ve got a song by Donovan, an artist who I think is an underrated influence on contemporary singer-songwriters.  His Sunshine Superman, is, song-for-song, a beautiful document of 60s tripped out psychedelia and optimism.  We’ll hear a tune from that album that looks to the darkside.  Then it’s up to 1969 and the debut from King Crimson, In the Court of the Crimson King.  Unlike the contemporary editions of this band, early Krimson could knock out a few ballads, especially when Greg Lake was singing the words of Pete Sinfield.   Moving up a decade, I’ll be dialing up some krautrock by Michael Rother from his second album, Sterntaler, with that beautiful guitar sound, the motoric drumming of Jaki Liebezeit and production from the late-Conny Plank.  .

From the early days of Echoes, look for music by Patrick O’Hearn, a musician who has remained a signature artist on the show from day one.   Then there’s an album by Roger Eno & Kate St. John. Roger is Brian’s younger piano playing brother.  St. John played oboe in The Dream Academy.  They made an early album of ambient chamber music called The Familiar before going on to form the chamber rock group, Channel Light Vessel with Bill Nelson.  We’ll hear one of many haunting tracks from The Familiar.

But of course, this is Echoes and I have lots of new music for you.  We’ll hear from the new album by Bombay Dub Orchestra, Tales from the Grand Bazaar as they continue to be masters of eastern fusion.  Morcheeba returns with a new album,  Head Up High  featuring singer Skye Edwards,  and I have new music by Pieter Nooten.  You may remember him from Clan of Xymox, an 80s new wave band on 4AD.  He went on to record a much loved album, Sleeps with Fishes with Michael Brook.  Now he returns with a double CD of ambient chamber music, Haven.

It’s all there and more tonight on Echoes.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Sign up for Echoes CD of the Month Club.   CD of the Month Club members will be getting Akara’s The World Beyond.  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!

Hans-Joachim Roedelius & Lloyd Cole: Clustered Commotions.

Hear the Echoes Interview with
Cluster’s Hans-Joachim Roedelius & Lloyd Cole in the Echoes Podcast.

In alternative rock circles, German bands from the 1980s are considered pioneers of sound.  Kraftwerk, Can, Neu, Harmonia and Cluster are consistently name-checked by everyone from David Bowie and Brian Eno to Stereolab and Radiohead. Hans-Joachim Roedelius, a founding member of Cluster and Harmonia, will be 80 in 2014, but he is still as prolific as ever.  He recently teamed up in an unlikely alliance with 80’s rock musician Lloyd Cole, best know for Lloyd Cole and the Commotions.  Their album together is Selected Studies Volume 1.  I talk to Lloyd Cole and Hans-Joachim Roedelius about their cross-generational collaboration tonight on Echoes.

Key Highlight;
Lloyd Cole: I am the anti-Moebius.

Hear Hans-Joachim Roedelius & Lloyd Cole in the Echoes Podcast.

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

Lloyd Cole & Hans-Joachim Roedelius.

It’s A Meeting of an 80s’s Rocker and 70′ Electronic Pioneer.

Tonight on Echoes, Cluster‘s (or Qluster) Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Lloyd Cole talk about their electronic collaboration.

In alternative rock circles, German bands from the 1980s are considered pioneers of sound.  Kraftwerk, Can, Neu, Harmonia and Cluster are consistently name-checked by everyone from David Bowie and Brian Eno to Stereolab and Radiohead. Hans-Joachim Roedelius, a founding member of Cluster and Harmonia, will be 80 in 2014, but he is still as prolific as ever.  He recently teamed up in an unlikely alliance with 80’s rock musician Lloyd Cole, best know for Lloyd Cole and the Commotions.  Their album together is Selected Studies Volume 1.  I talk to Lloyd Cole and Hans-Joachim Roedelius about their cross-generational collaboration tonight on Echoes.

Key Highlight;
Lloyd Cole: I am the anti-Moebius.

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

Harold Budd-Post Miles Improvisor

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 )))