May Top 25 Echoes CDs

World Fusion, Dream Pop and Ambient Americana in Echoes Top 25 for May

The Echoes Top 25 for May continues a trend towards chilled out vocal music but the top three slots are held by three CD of the Month picks, one vocal, two instrumental.  Lyla Foy is a relatively new artist who used to record as Wall.  Her Mirrors the Sky album, the first under her own name, was a CD of the Month in March.  But surrounding her are two veteran Echoes artists, one of who goes back even further than the show.  Carl Weingarten’s beautiful chamber Americana journey, Life Under Stars is our current CD of the Month in June.   And leading the pack is Hans Christian’s Hidden Treasures, our May CD of the Month selection, an album of cross-cultural ecstasy.  You can read about all of those and hear tracks by following the links above.

Newcomers to the Echoes Top 25 include Stumbeleine, 9Bach, Phox, Hauschka, Ben Cosgrove and Michael Barry-Rec.  Here’s thecomplete list.

ECHOES TOP 25 FOR MAY 2014

1. Hans Christian – Hidden Treasures (Allemande Music)
2. Lyla Foy – Mirrors the Sky (Subpop Records)
3. Carl Weingarten – Life Under Stars (Mutiphase Records)
4. Tori Amos – Unrepentant Geraldines (Mercury Classics)
5. S. Carey – Range of Light (Jagjaguwar)
6. Eno & Hyde – Someday World (Warp Records)
7. 9Bach – Tincian (Real World)
8. Beck– Morning Phase (Capital)
9. v/a – Passages – Framed by Nova (Ultimae)
10. Stumbleine – Dissolver (Monotreme Records)
11. Ian Boddy & Erik Wollo – EC12 (DiN)
12. Thus Owls – Turning Rocks (Secret City Records)
13. Marissa Nadler – July (Sacred Bones)
14. Tom Kerstens’ G Plus Ensemble – Utopia – (Real World)
15. Phox – Phox (Partisan Records)
16. Erik Scott – And the Earth Bleeds (Erik Scott)
17. Hauschka – Abandoned City (Temporary Residence)
18. Michael Barry-Rec – Continuum (Michael Barry-Rec)
19. Ben Cosgrove – Field Studies (Ben Cosgrove)
20. Deepernet – Impossible Landscape (Spotted Peccary)
21. Ludovico Einaudi – In a Time Lapse (The Remixes) (Ponderosa Music & Art)
22. Jennifer Zulli – Goddess Rising (Jennifer Zulli)
23. Cinema 12 – Cinema 12 (Cinema 12)
24. Bluetech – Cosmic Dubs (Native State Records)
25. Sylvan Esso – Sylvan Esso (Partisan)

 

Guitar Splendor in Echoes Top 25

Erik Wøllo and Mark McGuire bring guitars back to Echoes Top 25

Erik Wøllo’s February CD of the Month, Timelines,  leads Echoes Top 25.  It’s a brilliant recording of layered guitar dreamscapes.  Following close behind is our soon-to-be March CD of the Month, Mark McGuire’s Progressive Rock epic, Along the Way.  You’ll be hearing more about this album soon.  No fewer than seven vocal albums populate the top ten slots including Priscilla Ahn’s This is Where We Are; Warpaint‘s self-titled album; Linnea Olsson’s cello songs, Ah!; the return of Aurah with  Summon the Sky; Gem Club’s hazy In Roses and Simon Emmerson’s Fresh Handmade Sound reinvention of The Beatles on A Hard Day’s Night Treatment.  That last one, sadly, is not actually out yet.  The rebroadcast of Pure Bathing Culture’s live set boosted their return to the top 25.  See the complete list below.

ECHOES FEBRUARY TOP 25

1. Erik Wollo – Timelines (Projekt Records)
2. Priscilla Ahn – This is Where We Are (SQE Music)
3. Linnea Olsson – Ah! (Universal UK)
4. Mark McGuire – Along the Way (Dead Oceans)
5. Fresh Handmade Collective – Fresh Handmade Sound: A Hard Day’s Night Treatment (Lush)
6. Krusseldorf – Fractal World (Krusseldorf)
7. Aurah – Summon the Sky (Very Music)
8. Warpaint – Warpaint (Rough Trade Us)
9. Gem Club – In Roses (Hardly Art)
10. Pure Bathing Culture – Moon Tide (Partisan Records)
11. Lost in the Trees – Past Life (ANTI Records)
12. Blow Up Hollywood – Blue Sky Blond (Blow Up Hollywood)
13. All India Radio – Fall Remixes (All India Radio)
14. Larkenlyre – Music of the Extraordinary Voyages (Cynelic Gast Music)
15. Kristin Hoffmann – The Human Compass (Starr Records)
16. Olivier Libaux – Uncovered Queens of the Stone Age (Music For Music Lovers)
17. Darkside – Psychic (Matador Records)
18. Tonight Sky – Tonight Sky (Tonight Sky)
19. Juliette Commagere – Human (Aeronaut Records)
20. Muriel Anderson – Nightlight Daylight (Muriel Anderson)
21. David Helpling & Jon Jenkins – Found (Spotted Peccary)
22. Bluetech – Spacehop Chronicles Vol. 1 (Native State Records)
23. James Hood – Ceremony (Edible Sounds)
24. Banco de Gaia – Maya (Disco Gecko Recordings)
25. Divine Matrix – Hydrosphere (AD Music)

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

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.

TRANSMISSIONS: THE ECHOES LIVING ROOM CONCERTS VOLUME 19

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Hammock From Abyss to Revelation.

In a world of dance beats, rapid fire sequences and songs devolving into little more than hooks, Hammock takes a deeper, darker more textured approach.  They are the Mark Rothko of ambient music with sheets of sound shifting beneath each other like tectonic plates, but with the hint of melody and the feel of spirits rising toward the heavens. Oblivion Hymns lives up to its foreboding name in this extended tone poem to the end of life.

Hammock is operating in a classical dimension. The references to Arvo Pärt are obvious, but you might find their tone more heavily reflected in the “sacred minimalism” of the recently departed English composer, John Tavener. Inspired by the Russian Orthodox Church, Tavener’s music aspired to the heavens through the use of orchestras and choirs.  Hammock’s Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson achieve the same effect with Dali-stretched guitars and whole-note string pads, moving slowly through a shrouded landscape.

Darkness is only a superficial impression of Oblivion Hymns . Within their circumscribed sound world, Hammock creates uplifting, moving themes that are more edge-of-the-world than end-of-the-world.  Children’s choirs are deployed on a couple of tracks, notably on the gentle lament, “Then the Quiet Explosion” and “I Could Hear the Water at the Edge of All Things”

This is a follow-up to their 2012 opus, Departure Songs.  That was a monumental album, but could become oppressive over the course of its two CD length.  Maybe because of the children’s choir, Oblivion Hymns feels more hopeful, promising transcendence more than demise.

Hammock’s heavily processed guitar sound remains at the center of their music, but when an instrument like the piano turns up on “Holding Your Absence,” with spare, pensive chords it seems to wrap their ambient electric swirl around it, pulling all the elements together.

The cover of Oblivion Hymns is a Rorschach of ink blots by Amy Pleasant, and like the cover, you can read many things into Hammock’s music.  You might find yourself descending into the abyss, or after hearing the concluding vocal hymn, “Tres Domines,” sung by Timothy Showalter, you might see heaven’s gate.  But I keep finding myself rising up, floating through a celestial expanse, which might be the same thing.

With Oblivion Hymns Hammock’s Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson have created a magnificent and important work that will become a reference point for those working in ambient classical and post-rock modalities, and those looking for music that takes us beyond.

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.

John Diliberto’s Top 10 CDs 2013

This was one of the hardest lists ever to compile.  It’s different from 25 Essential Echoes CDs of 2013, which is our picks of the best music played on Echoes.  And it’s also different from The Best of Echoes 2013 Listener Poll results.   These are my picks from all the music I heard in what turned out to be an epic year for new music.  And in an epic year, these are the albums that rose to the top of the top for me.

1- Pat Metheny – Tap: John Zorn’s The Book of Angels, Vol. 20
Metheny takes fragmentary themes from composer John Zorn’s “Book of Angels” series and orchestrates them into expansive, electro-symphonic works.  The fact that it features some of Metheny’s most unbridled and psychedelic guitar playing in years is just a bonus.

2- Rhian Sheehan –  Stories from Elsewhere
On his 7^th album, Stories from Elsewhere,  Rhian Sheehan created one of the most sublime shadings of ambient chamber music since Harold Budd’s Pavillion of Dreams.  It’s a magical CD of soaring strings, surging rhythms, childlike music boxes and ambient expanses that sounds both familiar and timeless. It was a CD of the Month in May.

3 – Olivier Libaux – Uncovered Queens of the Stone Age
I don’t know if I could’ve gotten behind an album more than I did Olivier Libaux’s sublime covers of music by alt-metal band Queen’s of the Stone Age.  Part of the New Wave/Punk cover band Nouvelle Vague.  Libaux stepped out on his own to record the albums with singers including Emilianna Torinni and Inara George. He accomplished a melancholy re-imagining of this alt-metal band’s music. It was a CD of the Month in July.

4 – Ludovico Einaudi –  In a Time Lapse
In a Time Lapse is a defining album on which pianist/composer Ludovico Einaudi pulled out all the stops, synthesizing a 21^st century classicism that is all-embracing in its musical influences, and all-enveloping in its emotional sweep. It was Echoes CD of the Month in March,

5 – Moby   Innocents
Moby completes a trilogy of atmospheric, introspective songs that began with Wait for Me and Destroyed.  A CD of the Month in November,  Innocents is the most soothing melancholy.

6 – Ólafur Arnalds   For Now I Am Winter
Both sophisticated and edgy, Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds inhabits his own sonic universe, balancing emotions and mood on a laser’s edge of strings echoing out of frozen skies and electronics trawling the substrata.  For Now I Am Winter is his most mature work to date and a CD of the Month in April.

7 – Ulrich Schnauss A Long Way To Fall
A wonderfully melodic, groove driven album of synthesizer wonder as Ulrich Schnauss explores childhood memories with electronic dreams.  The title track will leave you breathless.  It was an Echoes CD of the Month in February.

8 – Mree   Winterwell
Serene dream pop from a 19 year old musician who comes from a singer-songwriter tradition but creates Enya like choirs with her voice on this lush and powerful album.

9 – Bleeding Rainbow   Yeah, Right
This Philadelphia based band created a garage-rock psychedelic ecstacy that often attained the epic mixing shoegaze guitars with motoric grooves and heroic girl-group choruses from singer Sarah Everton.  I’m still trying to figure out why Savages got so much hipster attention and this album slipped away.  Play it loud and you’ll wonder why as well.

10- Sigur Ros  Kveikur
Sigur Ros kick out the jams on this album of delirious, roiling textures and Jonsi’s falsetto melodies of prayer.  This is one of the Icelandic groups more aggressive outings which is saying a lot for a band that has no restraints in their electric storm.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

GIVE THE GIFT OF THE ECHOES CD OF THE MONTH CLUB

Join the Echoes CD of the Month Club.  David Helping and Jon Jenkins’ Found is 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.

25 Essential Echoes CDs for 2013

Some years are better than others and 2013 was much better than most.  Right now, you can Vote in the Best of Echoes 2013 Listener Poll.   But, this list is different.  This is compiled by the brain trust of Echoes.  These are the CDs we played on the show in 2013 that we thought represented the best, and most innovative aspects of the Echoes soundscape in this past year.  If your favorites aren’t on here, I’m not surprised.  This was one of the most outstanding years ever for Echoes music.  A lot of the albums left off could just as well have been put on.  But we had to pick 25 so here they are. You can see a straight list at the end.

25 ESSENTIAL ECHOES CDS FOR 2013

NUMBER ONE
1  Ludovico Einaudi  In a Time Lapse
Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi is a giant in Europe but still just lapping at America’s shores.  But he swept over Echoes years ago. The Echoes CD of the Month in March, In a Time Lapse is a defining album on which Einaudi pulled out all the stops, synthesizing a 21^st century classicism that is all-embracing in its musical influences, and all-enveloping in its emotional sweep.

2  Rhian Sheehan   Stories from Elsewhere
New Zealand composer Rhian Sheehan may have created one of the most sublime shadings of ambient chamber music on his 7th album, Stories from Elsewhere.  It’s a magical CD of soaring strings, surging rhythms, childlike music boxes and ambient expanses that sounds both familiar and timeless. It was a CD of the Month in May.

3  Olivier Libaux  Uncovered Queens of the Stone Age
Why this album wasn’t more popular is one of the mysteries of 2013.  I suspect that confusing branding, poor distribution and limited marketing kept this CD under the radar.  Olivier Libaux is part of the New Wave/Punk cover band Nouvelle Vague but he stepped out on his own to record an entire CD of tunes by Queens of the Stone Age.  All the high priests of hip at Pitchfork, Stereogum and Popmatters completely missed this album where Libaux, accompanied by singers including Emilianna Torinni and Inara George, accomplishes a sublime re-imagining of this alt-metal band’s music. It was a CD of the Month in July.

4  Moby   Innocents
The hipsters missed Libaux, but many called this Moby’s best album since Play.  I think it’s just a continuation of his atmospheric, introspective trilogy that began with Wait for Me and Destroyed.  A CD of the Month in November,  Innocents is the most soothing melancholy.

5 Ólafur Arnalds   For Now I Am Winter
Both sophisticated and edgy, Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds inhabits his own sonic universe, balancing emotions and mood on a laser’s edge of strings echoing out of frozen skies and electronics trawling the substrata.  For Now I Am Winter is his most mature work to date and a CD of the Month in April.

6  Jeff Greinke Scenes from a Train
Ambient music veteran Jeff Greinke reveals a grasp of orchestration never evident in his music before in this album of exotic chamber music with acoustic horns and strings.

7  Jah Wobble & Marconi Union Anomic
Although Anomic only came out in early 2013, I feel like I’ve been listening to it for years.  It has that sense of the classic about it. Bassist Jah Wobble brings his deep dub bass lines to Marconi Unions haunting electronic themes.

8 Hammock Oblivion Hymns
Following up their 2012 CD of the Year, Departure Songs, Hammock goes deeper into their ambient chamber music with children’s choirs emerging out of swirling deeply processed guitars.  It will be the first CD of the Month of 2014.

9 Bombay Dub Orchestra  Tales from the Grand Bazaar
Despite the presence of reggae rhyhm legends Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare on some tracks,  this is actually the most serene and melodically driven album yet of BDO’s merging of eastern music, electronic grooves and Bollywood strings.

10 Azam Ali & Loga Torkian   Lamentation of Swans-A Journey Towards Silence
The leaders of Niyaz released a deeply intimate and personal album with Azam Ali returning to her wordless vocals in this album of slow, sensual rhythms and darkly arabesque melodies.

11 Ulrich Schnauss A Long Way To Fall
A wonderfully melodic, groove driven album of synthesizer wonder as Ulrich Schnauss explores childhood memories with electronic dreams.

12 Agnes Obel Aventine
For her sophomore album, Danish singer Agnes Obel turns in another gem of haunting chamber pop.

13 Rachel Zeffira  The Deserters
And speaking of chamber pop, Rachel Zeffira turns her opera-trained soprano into a caressing hush; mixes circus organ with a song about suicide; and uses oboe arrangements that sound like The Left Banke’s “Pretty Ballerina.” The Deserters was the CD of the Month in June.

14 Sigur Ros  Kveikur
Sigur Ros kick out the jams on this album of delirious, roiling textures and Jonsi’s falsetto melodies of prayer.

15 William Tyler   Impossible Truth
Tyler takes John Fahey into the 21^st century, weaving fingerstyle guitar melodies that are like long epic tapes.  He’s known as an acoustic player but has lots of electric on Impossible Truth.

16 Akara  The World Beyond
With the heaven sent voice of Femke Weidema and the elaborate orchestrations of Joshua Penman, Akara creates a transglobal progressive sound that is out of this world on The World Beyond, the Echoes CD of the Month in October.

17 Mree   Winterwell
Serene dream pop from a 19 year old singer who comes from a singer-songwriter tradition but creates Enya like choirs with her voice on this lush and powerful album.

18 Colin Edwin & Jon Durant  Burnt Belief
Timed for release on December 21, the day after the Mayan calendar stopped and the world ended, Porcupine Tree bassist Colin Edwin and prog guitarist Jon Durant unleashed this album of post progressive rock moods.  We’re still here and thankfully, so is Burnt Belief.

19 David Helpling & Jon Jenkins   Found
David Helpling and Jon Jenkins’ bring 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 was a great CD of the Month to end 2013.

20 Jeff Johnson, Brian Dunning & Wendy Goodwin  Winterfold
This trio of keyboards, flutes and violin creates a music full of snow brushed melodies and lush arrangements with a hint of Celtic aire.

21 Syriana    Road to Damascus
This record came in under the radar from Real World.  It’s an exuberant mix of music from the Middle East to Ireland with musicians from Algeria, Ireland, Jordan, UK, Palestine but with hints of surf guitar and film noir scores.

22 Juliette Commagere   Human
Singer Juliette Commagere creates a beautiful and introspective electronic song cycle framing her sonorous soprano with a sound that recalls 80’s synth-pop but darker.

23 Anoushka Shankar Traces of You
With sister Norah Jones and producer/instrumentalist Nitin Sawhney, sitarist Anoushka Shankar creates a tribute to her father Ravi Shankar that continues his eclectic approach to east-west fusion.

24 HEM   Departure & Farewell
When you’re contemplating loss, betrayal and redemption, put on Hem’s introspective album about their own break-up and reunion with the caressing voice of Sally Ellyson.

25 Tonight Sky Tonight Sky
Tonight Sky is Jason Holstrom and he’s taken The Beach Boys’ harmonies and sent them into electronica space on this album of songs that manage to make you feel good while still being full of dark atmospheres.  Surf’s up again.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))
See below for a Spotify playlist of songs from all 25 albums save one.

25 ESSENTIAL ECHOES CDs FOR 2013

1. Ludovico Einaudi – In a Time Lapse (Ponderosa Music & Art)
2. Rhian Sheehan – Stories from Elsewhere (Darla Records)
3. Olivier Libaux – Uncovered Queens of the Stone Age (Music for Music Lovers)
4. Moby – Innocents (Mute)
5. Ólafur Arnalds – For Now I Am Winter (Mercury Classics)
6. Jeff Greinke – Scenes From A Train (Infectious Music)
7. Jah Wobble & Marconi Union – Anomic (30 Hertz)
8. Hammock – Oblivion Hymns (Hammock Music)
9. Bombay Dub Orchestra – Tales from the Grand Bazaar (Six Degrees)
10. Azam Ali and Loga R Torkian – Lamentation of Swans (Terrestrial Lane Productions)
11. Ulrich Schnauss – A Long Way to Fall (Domino Records)
12. Agnes Obel – Aventine (Pias America)
13. Rachel Zeffira – The Deserters (Paper Bag)
14. Sigur Ros – Kveikur (XL Recordings)
15. William Tyler – Impossible Truth (Merge Records)
16. Akara – The World Beyond (Merkaba Music)
17. Mree – Winterwell (Mree Music)
18. Jon Durant and Colin Edwin – Burnt Belief (Alchemy Records)
19. David Helpling & Jon Jenkins – Found (Spotted Peccary)
20. Jeff Johnson Brian Dunning & Wendy Goodwin – Winterfold (Ark Records)
21. Syriana – The Road to Damascus (Real World)
22. Juliette Commagere – Human (Aeronaut Records)
23. Anoushka Shankar – Traces of You (Deutsche Grammophon)
24. Hem – Departure and Farewell (Redeye)
25. Tonight Sky – Tonight Sky (Tonight Sky)

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

GIVE THE GIFT OF THE ECHOES CD OF THE MONTH CLUB

Nine of the CDs in this list were Echoes CDs of the Month, and the other three could’ve been on this list. 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.

Here’s a Spotify Playlist of tracks from all 25 CDs.  Jeff Johnson, Brian Dunning & Wendy Goodwin’s Winterfold isn’t on it, so I put a previous recording by Jeff Johnson in as a placeholder.

Still Corners Echoes Podcast Interview

Hear our Interview with the enchanting dream-pop group Still Corners in the Echoes Podcast.

Tessa Murray & Greg Hughes of Still Corners on Echoes

Still Corners is an English band with an American musician.  Greg Hughes writes the music and he’s from Phoenix, Arizona.  Singer Tessa Murray is from England.   It’s the sound of dreampop bands like the Cocteau Twins, psychedelia and surprisingly, horror films that suffuses the music of Strange Pleasures.

Their first album was a stripped down, 60’s psych-pop style release redolent of “96 Tears” but on their 2013 release, Strange Pleasures,  they expand their instrumental sonics and lyric concerns.

HIGHLIGHTS:
Greg Hughes:  The whole film aspect of it is really more when you watch certain movies they provide an atmosphere.  So like David Lynch and certain horror movies like Don’t Look Now and Silence of the Lambs, you’ll sit down and you’ll be immersed in the vibe that they project.  That’s what we’re taking and trying to put into the music.

You might never get that from the beautiful music they create.  Hear about it in the Echoes Podcast.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

ECHOES CD OF THE MONTH CLUB SPECIAL

Join or renew in the Echoes CD of the Month Club in November and you’ll get Bombay Dub Orchestra’s beautiful CD, Tales from the Grand Bazaar as a BONUS CD along with Moby’s Innocents album, our November CD of the Month selection.  You’ll get great CDs and help support Echoes at the same time.  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.

Echoes Interview: Quiet on Still Corners

Still Corners
Strange Pleasures

It’s a dream pop world out there lately and we just float thru it.  Tonight on Echoes I’ve got a band called Still Corners.  Their first album was a stripped down, 60’s psych-pop style release redolent of “96 Tears” but on their 2013 release, Strange Pleasures,  they expand their instrumental sonics and lyric concerns.

Still Corners is an English band with an American musician.  Greg Hughes writes the music and he’s from Phoenix, Arizona.  Singer Tessa Murray is from England.   It’s the sound of dreampop bands like the Cocteau Twins, psychedelia and surprisingly, horror films that suffuses the music of Strange Pleasures.

Tessa Murray & Greg Hughes of Still Corners on Echoes

Greg Hughes:  The whole film aspect of it is really more when you watch certain movies they provide an atmosphere.  So like David Lynch and certain horror movies like Don’t Look Now and Silence of the Lambs, you’ll sit down and you’ll be immersed in the vibe that they project.  That’s what we’re taking and trying to put into the music.

You might never get that from the beautiful music they create.  Hear about it tonight on Echoes.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Sign up for Echoes CD of the Month Club.  This month,  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 hear 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

Retro-California, Future Space & Joy Formidable On Echoes

Raygun Ballet – Big California

Today on Echoes it’s new music by Raygun Ballet.  This is the recording persona of John-Mark Austin.  He’s best known as an Academy Award winning CGI artist whose work includes Avatar among many others.  When he makes music, Austin explores a retro-futurism, pulling soundclips from the 50s that are usually looking forward to an age of jetpacks, flying cars and nuclear dreams.  His album, The World That Wasn’t, was not only some great electronic music, but a gas of visions of the future from the past. His new album looks at the promises of the Golden State,  It’s called Big California and we’ll hear a track from it tonight.

We’ll also hear a new project by Porcupine Tree bassist Colin Edwin called Endless Tapes.  He teams up with Italian multi-instrumentalist Alessandro Pedretti for an EP of roiling, deep moods that recalls his work with Jon Durant on Burnt Belief.

The Joy Formidable is a great alt-rock band from Wales that is usually pretty raging.  But earlier this year they put out an EP called The Silent Treatment that reveals a gentler side.  Surprisingly, we’re not playing the WIlliam Orbit remix but one of the more acoustic tracks.

We’re also going to hear from Gungor, a husband-wife duo from their album, I Am Mountain, and my palette is more than whetted by a single from Agnes Obel’s forthcoming CD, Aventine.  It’s all ahead today on Echoes.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Sign up for Echoes CD of the Month Club.   CD of the Month Club members will be getting Darshan Ambient’s Little Things 10 days before its released.  Follow the link to the Echoes CD of the Month Club and see what you’ve been missing.

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Ulrich Schnauss Echoes Podcast Interview.

German electronic musician Ulrich Schnauss talks about religion, space music and a return to electronic sound in the Echoes Podcast.

Ulrich Schnauss – A Long Way to Fall

Five years after his stormy, end-of-the-world electro-shoegaze treatise called Goodbye, German downtempo synth scientist Ulrich Schnauss returns with a new CD.  Gone are the layers of distorted sound, aggressive grooves and over-driven guitar timbres that marked Goodbye.  His latest album, A Long Way to Fall has a cleaner sound that harkens back to his earlier records like A Strangely Isolated Place. But run through the titles and it seems like the memories of a tormented life.  In this weeks Echoes Podcast, I take a leap with Ulrich Schnauss.

Further Reading & Listening:
CD of the Month Review of Ulrich Schnauss’ A Long Way to Fall.
Five Best Ulrich Schnauss CDs (Prior to A Long Way to Fall)

~John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

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Bleeding Rainbow’s Psychedelic Garage Ectasy .

From Nuggets to Neu, Philadelphia’s Bleeding Rainbow Channels the Psychedelic Storm

Bleeding Rainbow isn’t the kind of band you’ll hear on Echoes, but every now and then a new rock album catches my ear, and takes me into a different space that I don’t visit as often as I’d like, mainly because I don’t dig standing in rock clubs.  But after listening to Yeah Right,  I’d stand in one to hear Bleeding Rainbow.

The conundrum of the contemporary rock group is figuring out just what they’re going to pick from 60 years of rock history to inform their music.  Bleeding Rainbow, like The Dandy Warhols,  are scholars of rock and they draw from across the spectrum for their kinetic third album, Yeah Right.

The band has cited My Bloody Valentine and the distortion overtone guitar orchestras of Glenn Branca as influences.   You can also hear Velvet Underground drones on the opening “Go Ahead” with choked sustained feedback run that threatens to burst out and finally does on the chorus in a roar of Neu!– like fuzz.   Krautrock may be another inspiration, from the often motoric drumming from Greg Frantz (who recently left the group)  to the joy of guitar noise redolent of Neu! and Faust.  This is, after all,  a band who listened to The Can Tapes on a cross country tour.

But Bleeding Rainbow makes these sounds their own on their  third album, (the first two released under the name Reading Rainbow).  Kinetic songs like “Pink Ruff” with roiling overdriven guitar.  And that lurches right into the Jesus and Mary Chain cross-cut groove of “You’re Not Alone” with Rob Garcia and Sarah Everton’s chorused and distant vocals extolling a schizophrenic state of isolation.

For all their garage rock/punk conciseness, Bleeding Rainbow can attain the epic and they do that on both “Shades of Eternal Night” and “Fall Into Your Eyes.” The former is a minimalist haiku love song set against a storming rhythm and razor guitar chords.  “Fall Into Your Eyes” is a lament of love and transcendence lost with a grinding, shredded guitar riff and one of the more interesting drum grooves of the album.

The psychedelic trip of “Waking Dream” references The Kink’s “Tired of Waiting” in the guitar riff of the verse and then rips into a New Wave chorus that tears you out of your seat, adopting the quiet-loud approach of Nirvana.  It’s another song that makes good use of close vocal harmonies layered up in multi-tracked girl group-style choruses by the husband and wife founders of the group, Everton and Garcia.

Yeah Rightt is the kind of advance you’d expect from a group that’s maturing and finding more nuance in their sound.  The stripped down, lo-fi-to-a-fault production of their earlier work gives way to a more anthemic, body-shaking sound.  Instead of peering at the music through the haze of a washed out Polaroid, instruments are shredding like shattered glass and frayed fabric before your eyes.  My Bloody Valentine is an influence, but I know I’ll be listening to this a lot more than the new MBV release.  Yeah Right, along with Ulrich Schnauss’ A Long Way to Fall, is one of the few albums that I not only listen to repeatedly, but when it’s over I often go back to the top of the slide again.
~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 A Long Way to Fall.  Club members will get this album 10 days before release.  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.