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.

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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.

Darshan Ambient on Echoes.

Darshan Ambient Talks about Little Things Tonight on Echoes.

In the days before YouTube, iTunes and most other on-line music sources, Darshan Ambient was a minor star at mp3.com, the renowned legal music download site.  He released his music there and garnered nearly 100,000 listens.  That’s not much in terms of YouTube‘s multi-million-viewer hypes, but it was a lot in the fledgling days of on-line music.    Darshan Ambient outlived mp3 and has released several beautiful albums in the last decade.  His latest is Little Things and it was the Echoes Cd Of The Month in September.  Michael Allison is Darshan Ambient he whispers little things in my ear.

Darshan Ambient:  Growing up with the Beatles and progressive rock, I’m always trying to be progressive with the music that I’m doing and that’s really what I, what I consider myself doing is more progressive music than anything else.  And that could be anything.  Progressive music could have jazz elements, classical rock, you know, that sort of thing.

Hear Darshan Ambient’s interview tonight on Echoes.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Sign up for Echoes CD of the Month Club.  Last months picks was Darshan Ambient’s Little Things.  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 see what you’ve been missing.

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!

Darshan Ambient’s Little Things

Darshan Ambient’s Little Things – The Echoes CD of the Month for September

Hear it featured Labor Day Evening on Echoes

In the days before YouTube, iTunes and most other on-line music sources, Darshan Ambient was a minor star at mp3.com, the renowned legal music download site.  He released his music there and garnered nearly 100,000 listens.  That’s not much in terms of YouTube’s multi-million-listen hypes, but it was a lot in the fledgling days of on-line music.

Listening to Darshan Ambient you might not suspect that Michael Allison, the man behind DA, spent years playing edgy R&B with Nona Hendryx and punk with Richard Hell. That’s not an overt influence in Darshan Ambient’s music, and that’s especially true on his new CD, Little Things. But it’s there: in the musicality of his sound, the hook of his melodies, and the gentle tug of grooves that range from Jon Hassell-like rhythmic amalgams to jazz syncopations.

On “UnUsual Thursday,” Darshan Ambient seduces with unmoored ambiences before locking you in with an ambiguously ethnic percussion groove.  Is it Indian? African? Does it matter in the cross-cultural world where digital sound objects are available to anyone? In this digital ethnic world a sarangi lick can open a track like “Slow Drum”. Allison doesn’t play the Indian bowed instrument, but someone did somewhere at some time, and Allison uses that phrase to lead-off his piece, employing the signifiers of Indian music to create an ethnic music from culture that doesn’t exist.

That’s one of the questions posed by Michael Allison on his most mature and sublime album too date.  It features a seamless flow of sounds that are sometimes eastern, sometimes African, sometimes urban.  “The Mystery of Sleep” harkens back to Robert Rich’s techno-tribal moods, as Allison employs spare, picked  electric guitar timbres, cello and lap steel guitar in this slowly throbbing piece.  Rich uses lap steel as well, usually as a snaky Middle Eastern wail, but Darshan Ambient taps its country affinity to take middle eastern grooves into the west on “Shadow Country”, a new twist on Ambient Americana.

Michael Allison is a musical omnivore, so it’s not surprising when references to Miles Davis with a trumpet and tamboura drone turn up on the corner of Darshan’s “52nd St.”   After all, Darshan’s 2011 album, Dream In Blue, was an homage to Miles.   It’s even less surprising when Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians” is sound-checked on “Fields.” One might also hear Reich’s “Violin Phase” on “There!” or maybe it could be The Penguin Café Orchestra.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1E6dlbAktA

Little Things is as dark as it is dreamy, as melodically inviting as it is atmospherically enveloping, and it’s Darshan Ambient’s best album to date.

Hear Darshan Ambient’s Little Things featured tonight 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.

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!