Echoes Top 25 for December 2013

Here’s the last Top 25 list for 2013.  And like our 25 Essential Echoes CDs and The Best of Echoes Listener Poll, it reveals just what a great year 2013 was.  There are seven Echoes CD of the Month picks on it including December’s selection, David Helpling & Jon Jenkins’ Found.  That’s unusual, but that’s because of the Best of show and the 12 CDs of the Month for 2013 show.  But there’s a couple of CDs there that easily could’ve been CDs of the month, notably, Jeff Johnson, Brian Dunnings & Wendy Goodwin’s Winterfold, a wonderful album of atmospheric winter pastorals, Bombay Dub Orchestra’s Tales from the Grand Bazaar, a CD that get’s into a serene, ambient chamber music sound but with eastern edges and subtle dub grooves, and Azam Ali & Loga Ramin Torkian’s Lamentation of Swans, a deep dive into Persian atmospheres with a lush merging of extoci strings, throbbing percussion and synthesizer atmosphere’s all topped by the sensual wordless vocals of Azam Ali.  And next Month’s CD of teh Month is here as well, Hammock’s Oblivion Hymns. Here‘s the list.

ECHOES TOP 25 FOR DECEMBER 2013

1. David Helpling & Jon Jenkins – Found (Spotted Peccary)
2. Moby – Innocents (Mute)
3. Jeff Johnson Brian Dunning & Wendy Goodwin – Winterfold (Ark Records)
4. Olivier Libaux – Uncovered Queens of the Stone Age (Music for Music Lovers)
5. Tonight Sky – Tonight Sky (Tonight Sky)
6. Moya Brennan – An Irish Christmas (BFO Records)
7. Ólafur Arnalds – For Now I Am Winter (Mercury Classics)
8. Tom Griesgraber and Bert Lams – Unnamed Lands (Inner Knot)
9. Divine Matrix – Hydrosphere (AD Music)
10. Akara – The World Beyond (Merkaba Music)
11. Euphoria – E4 (Instrumental) (Euphoria)
12. Hammock – Oblivion Hymns (Hammock Music)
13. Bombay Dub Orchestra – Tales from the Grand Bazaar (Six Degrees)
14. Ulrich Schnauss – A Long Way to Fall (Ulrich Schnauss)
15. Brad Hoyt – Far Away from Every Day (Harp Guitar Music)
16. Juliette Commagere – Human (Aeronaut Records)
17. Ludovico Einaudi – In a Time Lapse (Ponderosa Music & Art)
18. Azam Ali and Loga R Torkian – Lamentation of Swans (Terrestrial Lane Productions)
19. Mary Fahl – Love & Gravity (Mary Fahl)
20. Eklipse – Electric Air (The End)
21. Frankie Rose – Herein Wild (Fat Possum Records)
22. Lotte Kestner – The Bluebird of Happiness (Saint Marie)
23. The Piano Guys – A Family Christmas (Portrait)
24. Courtney Barnett – A Sea of Split Peas (House Anxiety)
25. Grails – Black Tar Prophecies Vols 4-6 (Temporary Residence)

See 25 Essential Echoes CDs and The Best of Echoes Listener Poll

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.

12 Echoes CDs of the Month Tonight

WE LOOK BACK AT ECHOES CD OF THE MONTH PICKS FROM 2013

November: Moby – Innocents

Every month on Echoes we pick out the CD of the Month. It’s the album we think best represents the sound of Echoes and simply, the best album in that sound.  This year has been a great one for CD of the Month  selections, so I thought we’d do an entire show looking back at those albums. We’ll be going from our current December pick, David Helpling & Jon Jenkins’ Found, all the way back to our January pick, The Ambient Zone-Just Music Café Volume 4.

January: The Ambient Zone – Just Music Cafe Volume 4

They aren’t necessarily the best albums of the year, but they were all the best album of their respective months and I would be surprised if they all weren’t in our year end top 25.  It can be hard picking the albums. The selections are either slim or abundant.  This year fell on the abundant side as we had our best stretch of Echoes CD of the Month picks in a while.  As we head toward the end of the year and best of lists, I thought I’d look back at our twelve picks.  Maybe these are albums you voted for in the Best of Echoes 2013 poll going on right now at echoes.org.

Prepare for the show with reviews and tracks from all the CDs

March: Ludovico Einaudi – In A Time Lapse

January: The Ambient Zone – Just Music Café Volume 4
February: Ulrich Schnauss – A Long Way to Fall
March: Ludovico Einaudi – In A Time Lapse
April: Òlafur Arnalds – For Now I Am Winter
May: Rhian Sheehan – Stories from Elsewhere
June: Rachel Zeffira – The Deserters
July: Olivier Libaux – Uncovered Queens of the Stone Age
August: Melorman – Waves
September: Darshan Ambient – Little Things
October: Akara – The World Beyond
November: Moby – Innocents
December: David Helpling & Jon Jenkins – Found

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.

David Helpling & Jon Jenkins’ CD of the Month Hat Trick

DAVID HELPLING & JON JENKINS DISCOVER THE THIRD RING OF THEIR TRILOGY:
FOUND
THE ECHOES DECEMBER CD OF THE MONTH

Hear it featured tonight 12/2, on Echoes.

The next time you watch an episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones, mute the TV sound and dial up David Helpling and Jon Jenkins’ Found . You won’t need Ned Stark’s honor, Daenerys Stormborn’s dragon’s roars or Ramin Djawadi’s serviceable score to take you on a cinematic trip that will bring you from Westeros to beyond the Wall. Found is the third part of a trilogy, and it’s as grand as any fantasy epic.

Following Treasure and The Crossing, both previous CD of the Month picks, Found marks the end of a six year odyssey for the two veteran musicians, both of whom made their mark as solo artists first.  Helpling is primarily a guitarist and Jenkins a synthesist, but their worlds merge in their 21^st century electronic orchestra. Yet, as modern as they sound, the shadows of Patrick O’Hearn’s 1980s recordings are in every corner of this music.  You can hear it right away on “The Opening.”  A surging rhythm, a snaky underlying bass line and a sparse melody made up of layered synthesizers are all hallmarks of Patrick O’Hearn from his influential recordings on Private Music.  David Helpling and Jon Jenkins create a welcome extension of that sound.

David Helpling & Jon Jenkins in Helpling’s SoCal studio for Echoes.

David Helping’s electric guitar is a defining voice for the duo.  He doesn’t take any flashy solos.  Instead, he etches ringing arpeggios and morphing textures.  Even when he whips out some screaming sustained clarion calls on the grand climax of “Lost,” it’s mixed in the distance.

Unlike on their previous albums, Helping and Jenkins head into deep space on one track, the 13-minute “Only Ashes.”  Beat and percussion free, it moves on a slow dirge of space organ pads and long, Robert Fripp-like guitar sustains before slowly breaking orbit and rising into diaphanous space.

If things weren’t ominous enough, the title track floats on a spare sequencer pattern that is pounded by thunderstruck piano chords signaling imminent demise, reinforced by the angelic, though possibly avenging, voice of Miriam Stockley of Adiemus and AOMusic fame. Helpling and Jenkins stack her wordless cries in a wash of deep reverb that turns her pure soprano into a wraithlike choir that’s almost not recognizable as voice, sounding more like a complex synthesizer patch.

David Helpling and Jon Jenkins’ Found brings an orchestral approach to electronic music, where the orchestra is completely plugged-in, the timbres otherworldly, and the percussion tracks swept in on storms.  It’s a great CD of the Month to end 2013.

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.

Echoes November Top 25

Moby’s not that innocent, but Innocents leads the Echoes Top 25 for November.

Haven’t voted in the Best of Echoes 2013 Poll yet?  You could do worse than any 10 CDs from November’s Top 25.  Of course, Moby’s CD of the Month, Innocents leads the way, and just 3 away from the top is December’s pick, David Helpling & Jon Jenkins epic Found.  You’ll hear that album featured on Monday, 12/2 on Echoes.  Juliette Commagere’s entrancing electro-song-cycle, Humans comes in at number 2.  Did you hear her incredible performance on Echoes this past Monday? While veterans like Hammock, Vic Hennegan and Bombay Dub Orchestra are high up on the list, there’s a lot of new names.  Among them, London Grammar, Dream Koala, Minor Alps, Darkside and Cosmo Frequency.

VOTE in BEST OF ECHOES 2013 POLL

Don’t forget to vote in the Best of Echoes 2013 Poll where you can win some great Echoes prizes, and contribute to the best year end list on the planet.  Here’s the top 25.

ECHOES TOP 25 FOR NOVEMBER 2013

1. Moby – Innocents (Mute)
2. Juliette Commagere – Human (Aeronaut Records)
3. David Helpling & Jon Jenkins – Found (Spotted Peccary)
4. London Grammar – If You Wait (Metal & Dust)
5. Gary Numan – Splinter: Songs from a Broken Mind (Machine Music USA Inc.)
6. Hammock – Oblivion Hymns (Hammock Music)
7. Julianna Barwick – Nepenthe (Dead Oceans)
8. Bombay Dub Orchestra – Tales from the Grand Bazaar (Six Degrees)
9. Dream Koala – Odyssey (Splendid Music)
10. Vic Hennegan – Journey to Sirius (Alien Tribes Music)
11. Still Corners – Strange Pleasures (Sub Pop)
12. Desert Dwellers – Night Visions: Desert Dwellers Selected Remixes (Black Swan Sounds)
13. Eklipse – Electric Air (The End)
14. Anoushka Shankar – Traces of You (Deutsche Grammophon)
15. Euphoria – E4:Instrumental (Euphoria)
16. Agnes Obel – Aventine (Pias America)
17. Minor Alps – Get There (Barsuk)
18. Darkside – Psychic (Matador Records)
19. Mazzy Star – Seasons of Your Day (Ingrooves)
20. Cosmo Frequency – Soundtrack to Life (Good Moves Music)
21. Mary Fahl – Love & Gravity (Mary Fahl)
22. Matt Borghi and Michael Teager – Convocation (Matt Borghi & Michael Teager)
23. Moby – Everyone is Gone – EP (Mute)
24. Bryan Carrigan – Below Zero (Peonies Music)
25. zerO One – sOnar (Waveform)

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

ECHOES CD OF THE MONTH CLUB SPECIAL

New members of the Echoes CD of the Month Club will get Moby’s Innocents album, our November CD of the Month and a BONUS CD of Bombay Dub Orchestra’s Tales from the Grand Bazaar.  You’ll get great CDs and help support Echoes at the same time.  You’ll also get the new Echoes CD, Transmissions: The Echoes Living Room Concerts V19, You can do it all right here.

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.

Helpling & Jenkins-The Crossing: Echoes September CD of the Month.

Cinematic music in search of an epic film.

The summer of 2010 may not be remembered for many great movies, (Inception notwithstanding), but David Helpling and Jon Jenkins have brought us a great soundtrack.  It’s just that movie will be in your imagination.  Mixing keyboards, guitars and programming, their latest CD, The Crossing states its cinematic theme from the start on “Awake.”   The sound emerges out of a long silence, with a slow motion reveal like you would see in an old Imax nature film as the camera slowly widens while zooming in on a desert landscape or out into a starfield.

From there, Helpling and Jenkins take you on a 70 minute trip of interlaced delayed guitar melodies, ringing keyboards, and dramatic percussion flourishes.  Like their previous studio album, Treasure, an Echoes CD of the Month in July 2007, The Crossing is unremittingly pretty, bathing itself in dark electronic orchestral colors.<br>

It manages to remain outside both the mainstream and avant-garde of contemporary electronic music.  There’s no hip-hop rhythms, glitched sounds or fractured digital strategies here.  Instead, there’s almost a nostalgic future-is-now sheen to their work which luxuriates in viscous textures, rich, full-bodied timbres and major key melodies to the beyond.

Helpling & Jenkins @ Deep Exile

Timbrally, melodically and rhythmically, the shadow of Patrick O’Hearn drapes their work.  You can hear it in the suspended keyboard chords hanging in deep reverb on tracks like “The Same Sky” and the rhythmic trot of “Two Paths.” 

Living up to its name, the title track is a caravan journey traversing an endless sky of distant keyboards, time-stepping percussion and slow guitar arpeggios drenched in reverb until Helpling laces a beautifully constructed guitar solo that twists and pivots on the crescendo.

Other tracks like “For the Fallen,” recall Steve Roach’s most ambient dreamscapes with a slo-mo journey that’s more reverb than actual instrumental sound,  until a now patented Helpling & Jenkins keyboard cycle filters in as the clouds of reverb part.

You can’t help but be swept up in the cinematic expanse of The Crossing, which ends on a dynamic note of roaring synth orchestrations, tribal drums and another of Helpling’s screaming guitar solos on “Lifted.”

The Crossing would be a perfect soundtrack to a film deserving music of such epic scope.  For now, it’ll all have to be the movie in your head.  The Crossing is our Echoes CD of the Month for September.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

JOIN THE ECHOES CD OF THE MONTH CLUB.