Badass Music and Rush Tonight on Echoes

New Music from Bear McCreary & The Montreal Guitar Trio

Tonight on Echoes, new music from a film nobody saw, but you’ll definitely recognize the composer. It’s Bear McCreary who scored Battlestar Galactica and The Walking Dead as well as many films. We’ll hear his soundtrack to The Nights of Badassdom.  This movie was released on January 13 but looks like it went straight to video, or the internet, or wherever films go that only gross $86K.  However, it stars Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones), Steve Zahn (Treme, That Thing You Do!) and Ryan Kwanten (True Blood) and the trailer looks pretty funny.   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00CYP9GKE/echoes

We’ll also hear MG3, which is much cooler than saying the Montreal Guitar Trio.  Their new CD is Der Prinz and they take Rush‘s epic “Tom Sawyer” and turn it into an acoustic guitar epic.  You’ll hear it tonight on Echoes.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

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.

Alan Howarth In Echoes Podcast

Hear the Maestro of Horror Soundtracks,
Alan Howarth, in Echoes Podcast

Alan Howarth-Big Brother is Watching You at MOEMS

The music of horror in movies has been defined by a few composers.  One of them is Alan Howarth.  He’s from The Beatles generation and came up in the psychedelic era and the birth of modern electronic music.  He’s best known for working with director John Carpenter in the 1970s on films like the Halloween sequels, Christine and Escape From New York.  Last fall, Alan Howarth Played a set of his film music at the Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit performing against a backdrop of film clips with lots of Michael Myers and Snake Plissken.  I talked with Alan Howarth about the sound of horror.  Hear it in the Echoes Podcast

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.

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.

Alan Howarth-Composer of Horror on Echoes

Alan Howarth Trick or Death @ MOEMS Photo: Diliberto

The music of horror in movies has been defined by a few composers.  One of them is Alan Howarth.  He’s from The Beatles generation and came up in the psychedelic era and the birth of electronic music.  He’s best known for working with director John Carpenter in the 1970s on films like the Halloween sequels, Christine and Escape From New York.  Last fall, Alan Howarth Played a set of his film music at the Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit performing against a backdrop of film clips with lots of Michael Myers and Snake Plissken.  I talked with Alan Howarth about the sound of horror.

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.

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: The Sound of Battlestar Galactica

One Last  Farewell to the Best Frakkin’ Sci-Fi Show on Television

There is an audio version of this blog that is a real trip.  You can hear it here.

A couple of years ago I produced a fun interview with Bear McCreary about his soundtrack to Battlestar Galactica.  We updated it in 2008 before the final season.  Upon the release of the soundtrack to Season Four, the swansong for the show, I thought it would be a trip to pay one last visit to this great series and soundtrack. So I’ve reversioned the original interview into an Echo Location.

For those who don’t travel the spaceways of geekdom, Battlestar Galactica was a science fiction epic full of cyborgs, retro high-tech equipment and faster than light travel. But when composer and erstwhile accordionist Bear McCreary thought about the score, it wasn’t futuristic.

Bear McCreary

Bear McCreary: if I had to describe the sound of the score in one word, I would hope that it would be “ancient”.  I want the score to sound “old”.  Like “ancient old”.

Battlestar Galactica was one of the most sophisticated science fiction shows on television and Bear McCreary composed a soundtrack to match.  It’s a score based on acoustic instruments, and very traditional ones at that.

Bear McCreary: From the mini series, which kind of served as a pilot, the director on that was Michael Rymer.  And he had the idea to bring in Taiko drums.  And he was very literal about it.  His original concept was to literally score the entire show with nothing but Taiko drums.

Taiko drums remained a big part of the score throughout Battlestar‘s four seasons, but they have a limited emotional range so it wasn’t long before McCreary added an array of instruments and motifs that made it like a world music bazaar in overdrive.

Although Bear McCreary keeps most of the score in a stylistic netherworld, sometimes, he can’t help but let his Rock ‘n’ Roll freak side leak out.  A cover version of Dylan‘s “All along the Watchtower” was a highlight of the season three soundtrack.  And earlier on, a cue called “Black Market” was far from ancient, with grinding electric guitars that were straight out of Red-era King Crimson.

Bear McCreary: Except for the heavy metal stuff, there’s some instruments in there that are really old.  You just can’t hear them because of the 5-piece rock band blasting away.

Battlestar Galactica is gone, but its sound lives on. The fourth season soundtrack has just been released. Bear McCreary’s music can also be heard in the Battlestar prequel, Caprica, and on shows like Eureka.  This has been an Echo Location.

Colonel Tigh: Big frakkin’ deal!

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Echo Location: Wendy & Lisa’s Heroic Soundtracks

Former Prince divas Wendy & Lisa score the soundtrack for Heroes

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

The theme to the TV series, Heroes might be the shortest title music on television right now.  It was created by Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin, and if you yawn, you might miss it.

Wendy Melvoin:  You know what?  We were absolutely blown away when they said they wanted 10 seconds.  And how were we going to make something memorable at 10 seconds?

The theme to Heroes may fly by quicker than Hiro jumps through time, but the rest of that show is a non-stop cinematic swirl that ranges from the orchestral to ambient, east to west, poignancy to rage.

You might remember Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin as Wendy & Lisa, the vamped up guitarist and keyboardist for Prince and the  Revolution in the 1980s.  Prince fired them in 1986 and  after a few CDs that received mixed reception, the duo found themselves creating TV soundtracks and film scores.  They can be heard on Showtimes Nurse Jackie, Foxes Virtuality and most notably, NBC‘s Heroes.

A sonic signature to their score is the voice of Indian musician Shenkar, formerly known as violinist L. Shankar from the group Shakti.

Lisa Coleman: It’s when somebody’s power actually happens or when somebody discovers they have a power or when somebody will be running and then all of sudden, they can run really fast, like, “Whoa!  What just happened?”  We’ll do a Shenkar  voice.

They recently released their own album, White Flags of Winter Chimneys and you can hear the influence of soundtracks in their own music.

Wendy Melvoin:  It’s just a huge influence now on when we write a pop song. We were able to really pick apart each song like little mini-movies.

Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin’s soundtrack to Heroes has just been released and the latest CD by Wendy & Lisa is White Flags of Winter Chimneys.  This has been an Echo Location, Soundings for New Music.

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

Look for a more extensive interview with Wendy & Lisa on Monday, May 11 on Echoes.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Vangelis Documentary

John Diliberto & Vangelis

News is afoot that a documentary on Greek synthesist, Vangelis, has been produced by British cultural documentarian Tony Palmer.  Knowing a little about the culture surrounding the acclaimed, Academy Award-winning composer, I’m not sure if it will be more than a puff piece, but the list of commentators is pretty impressive, including all the film directors he’s worked with like Ridley Scott.     There’s more detail on the Planet Origo site, which is a good source for all things spacey and electronic.

You might also get a kick out of this earlier Echoes Blog on the True Story of Vangelis

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

The Real Story behind Vangelis

From the Vangelis list, I came across an alternative history of the Greek composer who scored Chariots of Fire and Bladerunner.  It’s in the Uncyclopedia.   I’m probably the last person on the planet to discover this take-off site on Wikipedia.  The Vangelis entry scores a direct hit on the enigmatic composer who is praised as a modern day Mozart by supporters and a modern day Mantovani by detractors.   I think the critical concensus on Vangelis has shifted over the years.  Parodies making him out to be practitioner of shlock and pomposity have been the norm, but I’m hearing more and more younger musicians name-checking Vangelis as an influence.    He’s been cited in recent years by artists like BT and Digitonal, the latter who said that their song, “93 Years On” from Save Your Light For Darker Days, was directly inspired by Vangelis’ Bladerunner score. While Vangelis can lapse into sappy melodies and bombastic arrangements, he’s also made some of the most propulsive, driving electronic music of the modern age with Albedo 0.39 and Spiral as well as some music that seems to reach out and grab you by the heart on albums like Opera Sauvage and his score to 1492: Conquest of Paradise.  The composer, who turned 65 last March, has slowed down in recent years, but his influence continues.     But enough of praise, go have a laugh at Vangelis’s Uncyclopedia entry.

John Diliberto ((( Echoes )))