Stars Shine in Tonight Sky on Echoes Tonight

Jason Holstrom in the Cabana

Tonight Sky remains one of my favorite and most curiously neglected albums of the last year.  Hear why you should love this music tonight on Echoes.

Jason Holstrom has been on the Seattle music since the turn of the millennium playing in groups like Wonderful and United States of Electronica. But none of that music would prepare you for the serenely feel good vibrations of his project,Tonight Sky.  He’s taken Beach Boys harmonies and sent them into electronica space.  In Seattle, I surf the music of Tonight Sky with Jason Holstrom tonight on Echoes.

Tell me that this song doesn’t just make you feel good.

Tonight Sky – Bonfire from Tonight Sky on Vimeo.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

WHERE & HOW TO LISTEN TO ECHOES

Echoes is on different stations, on different days and different times.
You can listen locally or stream-live from our many stations’ websites.
You can also stream it on-demand from Echoes On-line, our streaming subscription service.  You can sign up for a 1 week trial of unlimited streaming for $2.99 here.

Join the Echoes CD of the Month Club. and get Hans Christian’s Hidden Treasures, the May 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.

 

 

Erik Wøllo’s Timelines: Echoes February CD of the Month

Erik Wøllo’s Timelines
Echoes February CD of the Month

It’s a cliché, I know, but as soon as an Erik Wøllo album starts,
you know you are on a journey.  It’s like the moments before take-off, only Wøllo’s ascent doesn’t throw you back in your seat with G-Force thrust.  It’s a gentle rise into euphoric space. Timelines is a beautifully sculpted example of that.

Wøllo is a Norwegian musician who has been recording since 1984, releasing 18 solo albums in that span plus collaborations with musicians like Steve Roach, Ian Boddy and Kouame Sereba. From his 1988 album Traces (recently reissued on Spotted Peccary Records along with other Wøllo titles) Wøllo showed a command of detailed orchestrations and dramatic melodies. A guitarist and keyboardist, both elements come together in intricate and unexpected ways on Timelines.

Erik Wollo Live on Echoes 2010

Wøllo’s recent albums, Silent Currents and Airborne, have taken him into the drone zone inhabited by Steve Roach, but Timelines is a return to form for this guitarist who is more at home in a world of melody.  But you can hear those abstract influences in his electronic percussion palette which reflects the influence of his collaborations with Roach on Streams of Thought and Road Eternal.

The central core of this album is acoustic guitar, on which Wøllo composed all of the tracks, except I suspect, the spacey closer, “Ocean.”  On “Blue Rondo,” an acoustic guitar arpeggio seems to reveal itself out of an electronic swirl, merging with glurpy water drip electronic percussion, soaring synth pads and growling electric guitar drones before evolving into a gently percussive piece with some searing ebow guitar leads.

Erik Wollo Live on Echoes 2010

“Visions” is the centerpiece of the album, a slowly building work of interlocked percussion, electronic cycles and that ebow guitar that seems to emerge like a stealth bomber out of the storm clouds. Maybe that imagery is a little foreboding, but that’s what draws me to Wøllos music.  A track like “Along the Journey” could be a gentle walk through a Norwegian forest and easily devolve into New Age prettiness.  But throughout the walk, Wøllo has ambient atmospheres swirling at the edges, leaving them unfocused and mysterious.  There’s a darkness that balances the light, a dark undertow that serves to put his melodies in beautiful bas relief.  And then of course, there’s the thudding percussion and spiraling ebow solo that reveals this is no country walk.

Erik Wøllo has had a few CD of the Month picks in the past.  It’s hard not to.  Time is suspended when you cross Erik Wøllo’s Timelines.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))
Read more about Erik Wøllo
Gateway CD of the Month
Erik Wøllo & Steve Roach Interview

Join the Echoes CD of the Month Club.  Erik Wøllo’s Timelines is our February 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.

Tonight Sky’s Jason Holstrom in Echoes Podcast

Hear About Beach Boys, Ukuleles and Space Music with Tonight Sky in the Echoes Podcast.

Jason Holstrom in the Cabana

Jason Holstrom has been on the Seattle music since the turn of the millennium playing in groups like Wonderful and United States of Electronica. But none of that music would prepare you for the serenely feel good vibrations of his project,Tonight Sky.  He’s taken Beach Boys harmonies and sent them into electronica space.  In Seattle, I surf the music of Tonight Sky with Jason Holstrom.  Hear it in the Echoes Podcast.

Tell me that this song doesn’t just make you feel good.

Tonight Sky – Bonfire from Tonight Sky on Vimeo.

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.

Surf’s Up with Tonight Sky

Jason Holstrom in the Cabana

Jason Holstrom has been on the Seattle music since the turn of the millennium playing in groups like Wonderful and United States of Electronica. But none of that music would prepare you for the serenely feel good vibrations of his project,Tonight Sky.  He’s taken Beach Boys harmonies and sent them into electronica space.  In Seattle, I surf the music of Tonight Sky with Jason Holstrom.

Tell me that this song doesn’t just make you feel good.

Tonight Sky – Bonfire from Tonight Sky on Vimeo.

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.

Echo Location: Tosca’s Chillout Soliloquy

Tosca turns down the beats and turns up the atmosphere on No Hassle.

You can hear an audio version of this blog with Tosca music here.

The Viennese duo called Tosca may take their name from the Puccini opera, but this plugged in pair doesn’t usually have romantic intrigue and mezzo-sopranos in mind when they compose.
Tosca is Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber.  Dorfmeister is a half of the Kruder & Dorfmeister duo who have been making downtempo electronica since 1993 with songs like “High Noon.”  In 1997 Dorfmeister teamed up with Huber, his childhood friend who was already a figure on the European avant-garde scene making music you’re more likely to hear in Paris’s Pompidou Center than a Berlin club.   As Tosca, Dorfmeister and Huber weren’t thinking operatic dramaturgy.  They were thinking street singers. “Chocolate Elvis” was their first single, using the field recording of a New York City street singer as the basis for their jazz inflected electronic vamp, which dd indeed, have an operatic  soprano sampled on there.

Tosca has released five full length albums and countless remixes of their own music and materiel from others.  But on their new CD, No Hassle, they’ve taken downtempo deeper than the chillout lounge with a CD of seductive rhythms and ephemeral melodies. They leave the vocals of previous albums behind, but seductive voices emerge on the swampy Bladerunner blues of “Birthday” with an ever so-cool spoken word enticement.

No Hassle is an electronica answer to “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,”  a soundtrack to “turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.”  It’s The Echoes CD of the Month for June and I’ll feature it on Mondays show.

You can read a full review of Tosca’s No Hassle here.

You can hear an audio version of this blog with Tosca music here.

This has been an Echo Location.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))