Azam Ali & Loga R. Torkian on Echoes Podcast

Hear Azam Ali & Loga R. Torkian interviewed on the ECHOES PODCAST

Azam Ali and Loga R. Torkian used to be in two different bands.  Torkian played guitar in the Persian fusion band, Axiom of Choice and Ali was half of the world fusion duo,  Vas.  They got together romantically and musically and formed the Persian electronica band,  Niyaz.  Now they’re a married couple with a five year old child and they’ve released their first album as a duo.  It’s called Lamentation of Swans, a Journey into Silence. Hear Azam Ali & Loga R. Torkian whisper about music in the Echoes Podcast.

HIGHLIGHTS

Azam Ali on her Iranian roots: Wherever you’re born, that’s where your roots are.  And you can live your whole life in foreign countries, but that connection to where you are will always remain.

Loga R. Torkian on discovering the guitarviol:  As soon as I played the first note I knew this is a magical instrument.  And I told him in 10 minutes, Jonathon [Wilson], can you build one for me?

Azam Ali on her imaginary language:  There is a certain value to making it sound like a language because just the human mouth is capable of so many different kinds of sounds.  And when you add the syllables it changes the texture of a melody.  It breaks the note in a particular way, it affects the kind of ornaments you can use, and in so doing, there are so many emotions that can be experienced.

Hear them talk about their music in the Echoes Podcast.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

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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

Why Do People Hate Prog Rock? Yes Is the Answer, Maybe.

Hear the Podcast of Echoes with Yes Is The Answer Editors Marc Weingarten & Tyson Cornell.

Marc Weingarten and Tyson Cornell are Progressive Rock fans and they’ve edited a collection of personal essays about the genre called Yes is the Answer and Other Prog Rock Tales. Contributors such as novelist Rick Moody and music critic Jim DeRogatis write about their mixed feelings about Progressive Rock. We’ll talk with Weingarten and Cornell about the mixture of love and embarrassment so many writers feel for the genre.  Hear them talk about it on the Echoes Podcast.

Tyson Cornell’s Yes Tattoo.

HIGHLIGHTS

Marc Weingarten: It’s sort of like cool people are afraid to admit that they like this highly uncool music.

Tyson Cornell: I listen to Yes every single day.  I have a Yes tattoo on my chest.
Mark Weingarten:  It’s true, folks.

Hear my Prog Playlist on Spotify: Progressive Delites

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 Libaux’s 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.

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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.

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Seven Saturdays Echoes Podcast

Hear the Echoes Interview with Seven Saturdays in the Echoes Podcast

What do you do when you’ve been weened on Brian Eno, Zero 7 and Pink Floyd, but you’re only in your mid-30s?  There’s a good chance you might make music like Seven Saturdays.  That’s the recording project from Jonathan D. Haskell who began making music under that name a few years ago.  On his latest album he moves from ambient instrumentals to dream pop.  It’s called Seven Saturdays, not to be confused with their debut EP, Seven Saturdays.

HIGHLIGHTS

On Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon, like every other kid we wore that out and I remember we used to go to the Griffith Park Observatory and they did a laser show in high school.  And we’d go there and totally zone out to Dark Side.

On vocals:  The minute I added a vocalist, any kind of a vocal, I felt a more human connection to each song.  Just having that human voice in there, a girl singing oohs and ahhs or whatever, makes me feel more connected to it in a way.

On Electronic Music:  It’s not electronic music….Pretty much everything is recorded with a microphone or a person playing it, you know.  There’s just not a lot of electronics going on and it’s very analog in a way.

Here’s a video of one of the tunes:

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

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Tina Malia’s Electronic Epiphany on Echoes

Tina Malia Then

Tina Malia Now

Hear Tina Malia’s Electronic Epiphany tonight on Echoes.

When we first met Tina Malia in 2001, she was writing ethereal singer-songwriter tunes while gearing up for intoning kirtan chants with Jai Uttal.  All of it was based in acoustic sounds.  But on her new CD, The Lost Frontier, Malia has sculpted an album of deep dream pop with electronic grooves and moods.  It’s a major stylistic and imagistic shift for the artist.

Tina Malia: For all these years in my musical career I was avidly against electronic music.  I thought it was evil, I mean I really did.  It was the antithesis of music to me.  It was the antithesis of nature.  And then one day I was at this festival and I heard some electronic music and I just couldn’t help myself.  It was so beautiful and I fell in love with it.

The result is one of the most beautiful Dream Pop albums of the last year.  Hear about Tina Malia’s electronic conversion and the evolution of a hippie chick tonight on Echoes.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))
You can also hear Tina Malia’s interview 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 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

Little People’s Ambient Chamber Music.

Listen to the Little People Echoes Interview Here.

In the world of electronic music we sometimes forget that that description also embraces Hip Hop and Rap music.  That is, those of us on the space and ambient side of things forget.  But Laurent Clerc grew up listening to American and English Hip-Hop and even played it for a while.  But now he’s gone into more downtempo directions, recording ambient chamber music under the guise, Little People.  His latest album is a statement release called We Are But Hunks Of Wood.

Laurent Clerc of Little People

Laurent Clerc is sitting in his studio in Brighton England, essentially a room in the house he shares with his wife.  “Mostly it’s pretty simple,” he says. “Basically it’s mostly a laptop and I’ve got a few synths, and bits and bobs and you know, a few kind of like glockenspiels and bells, other little sound sources.  And I’ve got quite a lot of vinyl and a turntable.  So that’s it.”

The vinyl and turntables are important because Clerc started out in the world of Hip-Hop and he thinks of the music he makes as Little People as Hip-Hop without the rapping.  “So when I say hip hop it’s more the sampling and the use of typical Hip-Hop drums and things like that,” he explains.  “That’s the aesthetic I like and it’s what I took with me. So. there’s no rapping.”

Laurent Clerc was born and raised in Switzerland with Swiss and English parents.  It was there that Hip-Hop changed his world.  “It was quite bizarre because I was in Switzerland and our local radio station had this one DJ who basically got all his records from New York,” remembers Clerc.  “It’s mind blowing to think that this one guy just formed the tastes of all these kids growing up listening to that radio station, just because he liked that particular music coming out of New York at that time.”

A Tribe Called Quest, DJ Shadow and DJ Crush were some of the artists that Laurent Clerc heard.  He confesses he tried his hand at rapping for a minute. “I did dabble with MC’ing, but we’ll try and keep that quiet,” he requests.

Instead he was drawn to sounds, textures and moods.  “My love of music extends beyond just melody,” he says.  “For me, music is about texture, is about sounds, so you know, a record usually is a kind of a combination of all the different sounds I’ve created and come across and meld those into one.

You can hear Laurent Clerc talk more about the music of Little People, and hear some of his beautiful, ambient chamber music in the Echoes Podcast.

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~© 2012 John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Sign up for the Echoes CD of the Month Club and get Tangents now as a bonus for your membership now! 

Sign up forEchoes CD of the Month Club and you will not only receive the November CD pick, Jeff Johnson & Phil Keaggy’s WaterSky, but Tangents – The Echoes Living Room Concerts Volume 18 as well.  With the Echoes CD of the Month Club, you get great CDs like  WaterSky coming to you each month.  Join now and you’ll get Watersky plus Tangents – The Echoes Living Room Concerts Volume 18. Follow the link to the Echoes CD of the Month Club  and see what you’ve been missing.

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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.

Loner Echoes Podcast

We’ve put up the Echoes Podcast for this week. It’s our interview with English ambient singer-songwriter, Loner.

Echo Location Podcast-Michael Whelan & Atomic Skunk

Podcast of Echo Location with Michael Whelan and Atomic Skunk

Listen Here.

I usually create blogs out of Echo Location features, but this week I reversed direction and created an Echo Location out of the blog posting:

Michael Whalen & Atomic Skunk: Free Music that Doesn’t Stink

Follow link to original blog post which has links to two free download albums of electronic music.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))