“Phaedra” at 40 in Echoes Podcast

Hear an Homage to Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra in the Echoes Podcast

Tangerine Dream circa 1974

On February 20th, 1974, Tangerine Dream released the album that changed electronic music for the next 40 years.  It takes its name from Greek mythology and its sound from the imaginations of Edgar Froese, Peter Baumann and Christoph Franke, the three members of Tangerine Dream at the time.  Phaedra was their fifth album, coming on the heals of Atem in 1973 and Zeit in 1972.  Both of those albums were abstract improvisations of floating sound fields.  Zeit in particular was a minimalist, Ligeti-like exploration in texture and sustain with a mixture of electronics and a cello quartet.   Phaedra had some of those elements, but on the side-long title track they were linked to sequencer grooves like rubber bands being twanged in space.  It’s the sound you hear in every retro-space band, a lot of techno and dance hits like Donna Summers’ “I Feel Love.”

On the Echoes Podcast, we celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Phaedra with commentary from several artists influenced by this recording.  Moby, Ulrich Schnauss, Mark Shreeve, Ian Boddy, Robert Rich, Steve Roach, and Alan Howarth sing Phaedra’s praises and Edgar Froese reveals the thought behind the introduction of sequencers into the band.  We’ll also hear two tracks off the album and a set of music from Tangerine Dream influenced artists.  You can trip into space on Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra in the Echoes Podcast

Five  years ago, I compiled a list of the 10 Best Tangerine Dream albums.  Phaedra is at the top of that list.  Here’s the rest.

10 Best Tangerine Dream Albums From Number Six of 20 Icons of Echoes

On the air I said I’d pick five, but I decided to go with ten.

1-Phaedra
2-Rubycon
Phaedra and Rubycon have always been a pair for me and  that pair is half of a quartet with Ricochet and Stratosfear.   These are the signature Dream albums, the blueprint for every retro-space artist out there, the sound that influenced ambient, techno, and more.   The classic trio of Edgar Froese, Christoph Franke and Peter Baumann found the secret of rubber band sequencer patterns discovered by Tonto’s Expanding Headband 2 years earlier.  The Dream   bound them in  interlocking patterns, mellotron chords and synthesizer textures.    Phaedra is transitional, retaining some of the avant-garde Ligeti-esque texturalism from Zeit on the mellotron drenched “Mysterious Semblance at the Strands of Nightmare,” but the title track and Rubycon, an album length composition were definitive journeys into inner space.

3-Logos
Tangerine Dream was an exciting live band in the 70s and half of the 80s.  Listening to Logos, from 1982, you can hear why.  This was the Dream working with a precision and structure that earlier works didn’t have, but they were still creating in long-form with a fair amount of improvisation.  Johannes Schmoelling had been in the group for a while at this point and his influence is felt in gorgeous melodies and rhythms that have you ricocheting off your seat and between your headphone cups.  This was really the truly last live recording from the group.  Subsequent live albums would be more pre-programmed performances.

4-Zeit
It’s been called their most experimental CD, but I think it’s their most thoughtful, controlled and uncontrived album.  Playing with a cello quartet, it’s a journey of interwoven tones phasing through each other from acoustic to electric to something entirely new.  Ambient before ambient, but owing much to Gyorgy Ligeti pieces like “Atmospheres,” synths, gliss guitar, organ and “noise generators” unfold in undulating, slow motion patterns across what was a double LP.  This 1972 recording is a drone zone manifesto, and a beautifully enveloping work free of melody, rhythm and just about any other conventional music signpost.

5-Tangram
This is one of the last long-form Dream recordings.  Originally a two sided work, Tangram is a  multi-movement opus sometimes sabotaged by episodic writing, but still with some haunting themes amidst the pounding sequencers and more melodic invention than most prior Dream albums.

6-Stratosfear
Part of the classic quartet of albums, this was their most commercial release to date and the first album with real melodies.

7-Ricochet
The other album in the classic quartet.  Ricochet was their first live album, although it was all new materiel and sounds like a studio recording.  Another two-sided excursion that moves from the quietest solo piano spot to thundering sequencers from the heavens.

8-Goblins’ Club
Goblins’ Club recalls the 80’s sound of Tangerine Dream when they were just adding more aggressive rhythms and clearly defined melodies to their fanciful spacescapes.  But unlike so many of their post-Virgin releases, this 1996 albums doesn’t bludgeon you with canned synthesizer bombast.  There seems to be more exploratory fun and a more personal sound   as they drop in surreal free falls in the midst of their dramatic compositions.

9-Force Majeure
Something of an anomaly in that it features a drummer, Klaus Krieger, and gives the Dream a more fluid and aggressive sound, especially in the screaming side long title track.

10-Optical Race
I know that consensus opinion has it that the Private Music years sucked, and they did, except for Optical Race the first album they made for the label, owned by former Tangerine Dreamer, Peter Bauman.  With just Froese and Paul Haslinger, they create dense, rhythmically charged excursions that stand up to some of their best works and hold up better than albums like Le Parc.

Finally an album that should be on the list, Epsilon in Malaysian Pale, the third solo album from Edgar Froese and a Dream album by any other measure.

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.

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.

 

 

Tangerine Dream’s “Phaedra” at 40

On February 20th, 1974, Tangerine Dream released the album that changed electronic music for the next 40 years.  It takes its name from Greek mythology and its sound from the imaginations of Edgar Froese, Peter Baumann and Christoph Franke, the three members of Tangerine Dream at the time.  Phaedra was their fifth album, coming on the heals of Atem in 1973 and Zeit in 1972.  Both of those albums were abstract improvisations of floating sound fields.  Zeit in particular was a minimalist, Ligeti-like exploration in texture and sustain with a mixture of electronics and a cello quartet.   Phaedra had some of those elements, but on the side-long title track they were linked to sequencer grooves like rubber bands being twanged in space.  It’s the sound you hear in every retro-space band, a lot of techno and dance hits like Donna Summers’ “I Feel Love.”

Tonight on Echoes, we celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Phaedra with commentary from several artists influenced by this recording.  Moby, Ulrich Schnauss, Mark Shreeve, Ian Boddy, Robert Rich, Steve Roach, and Alan Howarth sing Phaedra’s praises and Edgar Froese reveals the thought behind the introduction of sequencers into the band.  We’ll also hear two tracks off the album and a set of music from Tangerine Dream influenced artists.  You can trip into space on Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra tonight on Echoes

Five  years ago, I compiled a list of the 10 Best Tangerine Dream albums.  Phaedra is at the top of that list.  Here’s the rest.

10 Best Tangerine Dream Albums From Number Six of 20 Icons of Echoes

On the air I said I’d pick five, but I decided to go with ten.

1-Phaedra
2-Rubycon
Phaedra and Rubycon have always been a pair for me and  that pair is half of a quartet with Ricochet and Stratosfear.   These are the signature Dream albums, the blueprint for every retro-space artist out there, the sound that influenced ambient, techno, and more.   The classic trio of Edgar Froese, Christoph Franke and Peter Baumann found the secret of rubber band sequencer patterns discovered by Tonto’s Expanding Headband 2 years earlier.  The Dream   bound them in  interlocking patterns, mellotron chords and synthesizer textures.    Phaedra is transitional, retaining some of the avant-garde Ligeti-esque texturalism from Zeit on the mellotron drenched “Mysterious Semblance at the Strands of Nightmare,” but the title track and Rubycon, an album length composition were definitive journeys into inner space.

3-Logos
Tangerine Dream was an exciting live band in the 70s and half of the 80s.  Listening to Logos, from 1982, you can hear why.  This was the Dream working with a precision and structure that earlier works didn’t have, but they were still creating in long-form with a fair amount of improvisation.  Johannes Schmoelling had been in the group for a while at this point and his influence is felt in gorgeous melodies and rhythms that have you ricocheting off your seat and between your headphone cups.  This was really the truly last live recording from the group.  Subsequent live albums would be more pre-programmed performances.

4-Zeit
It’s been called their most experimental CD, but I think it’s their most thoughtful, controlled and uncontrived album.  Playing with a cello quartet, it’s a journey of interwoven tones phasing through each other from acoustic to electric to something entirely new.  Ambient before ambient, but owing much to Gyorgy Ligeti pieces like “Atmospheres,” synths, gliss guitar, organ and “noise generators” unfold in undulating, slow motion patterns across what was a double LP.  This 1972 recording is a drone zone manifesto, and a beautifully enveloping work free of melody, rhythm and just about any other conventional music signpost.

5-Tangram
This is one of the last long-form Dream recordings.  Originally a two sided work, Tangram is a  multi-movement opus sometimes sabotaged by episodic writing, but still with some haunting themes amidst the pounding sequencers and more melodic invention than most prior Dream albums.

6-Stratosfear
Part of the classic quartet of albums, this was their most commercial release to date and the first album with real melodies.

7-Ricochet
The other album in the classic quartet.  Ricochet was their first live album, although it was all new materiel and sounds like a studio recording.  Another two-sided excursion that moves from the quietest solo piano spot to thundering sequencers from the heavens.

8-Goblins’ Club
Goblins’ Club recalls the 80’s sound of Tangerine Dream when they were just adding more aggressive rhythms and clearly defined melodies to their fanciful spacescapes.  But unlike so many of their post-Virgin releases, this 1996 albums doesn’t bludgeon you with canned synthesizer bombast.  There seems to be more exploratory fun and a more personal sound   as they drop in surreal free falls in the midst of their dramatic compositions.

9-Force Majeure
Something of an anomaly in that it features a drummer, Klaus Krieger, and gives the Dream a more fluid and aggressive sound, especially in the screaming side long title track.

10-Optical Race
I know that consensus opinion has it that the Private Music years sucked, and they did, except for Optical Race the first album they made for the label, owned by former Tangerine Dreamer, Peter Bauman.  With just Froese and Paul Haslinger, they create dense, rhythmically charged excursions that stand up to some of their best works and hold up better than albums like Le Parc.

Finally an album that should be on the list, Epsilon in Malaysian Pale, the third solo album from Edgar Froese and a Dream album by any other measure.

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.

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.

 

 

Journey to Sirius with Vic Hennegan Live on Echoes

Vic Hennegan Live on Echoes

Acclaimed Space Musician Vic Hennegan Play Live on Echoes

You can sort of blame me for Vic Hennegan.  He grew up in Philadephia in the 1970s listening to me spinning space music albums by Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream and Jean Michel Jarre on WXPN back then.  That, and the fact that his mother took him to psychedelic ballrooms like the Electric Factory as a child permanently mutated Vic Hennegan’s musical DNA. Now he makes his own electronic music that emulates that sound and brings in something new.  He recently put out a download release called Journey to Sirius.   He comes into the Echoes Living Room to play music from it live.  You can also hear a long track from his set, an unreleased piece, on our album TRANSMISSIONS: THE ECHOES LIVING ROOM CONCERTS VOLUME 19 (See below)

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.

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.

Last Spaceship Before Christmas: Vic Hennegan Live on Echoes

Vic Hennegan Live on Echoes

You can sort of blame me for Vic Hennegan.  He grew up in Philadephia in the 1970s listening to me spinning space music albums by Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream and Jean Michel Jarre on WXPN back then.  That, and the fact that his mother took him to psychedelic ballrooms like the Electric Factory as a child permanently mutated Vic Hennegan’s musical DNA. Now he makes his own electronic music that emulates that sound and brings in something new.  He recently put out a download release called Journey to Sirius.   He comes into the Echoes Living Room to play music from it live.

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.

From Beach Boys to Tangerine Dream: Ulrich Schnauss & Mark Peters in Echoes Podcast

Hear Ulrich Schnauss & Mark Peters Interview in the Echoes Podcast.

It’s been an Ulrich Schnauss year here at Echoes.  He had a CD of the Month in February this year with A Long Way to Fall and we interviewed him as well.  Then he played live for us in early September and now he’s back again.  It turned out that when he came in to play live he also had a forthcoming album with guitarist Mark Peters from Engineers, and it just so happened that Peters was tagging along with Schnauss on tour.  So I sat them down to talk about their music for an alternate reality.

Ulrich Schnauss is one of the icons of downtempo electronica with albums like A Strangely Isolated Place and A Long Way to Fall.  Mark Peters is a bit less well known in this country.  He has a band called Engineers in England who play a dreamy brand of shoegaze music.  He and Ulrich Schnauss hit it off so well that Schnauss actually joined Engineers.  But the two musicians have also released a pair of duet albums for guitar and electronics.  Their latest is Tomorrow is Another Day.

Ulrich Schnauss Live on Echoes

Highlights:
Mark Peters on The Beach Boys: It hit me really hard when I was kind of first learning to play guitar at 15.  And then I’d just become a super nut about it and every last bootleg, every little clip on YouTube, everything is just…and I think it’s just, you know, kind of a classical type complexity that’s just so interesting.
John Diliberto: You’re hardcore, aren’t you?
Mark Peters: Big time.  Bit of a geek.  Yeah, Ulrich’s got his head in his hands.

Ulrich Schnauss on altered states: That’s the point at the end of the day, like you’re trying to create something that doesn’t reflect the reality that surrounds you, but something that actually creates the opposite, a counterpoint to reality, an alternative or a utopia.

Hear Ulrich Schnauss and Mark Peters  on the Echoes Podcast.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Sign up for Echoes CD of the Month Club.   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!

Dreams and Machines, Autoharps and Sequencers tonight on Echoes.

Tonight on Echoes you can hear a singer-songwriter who could’ve been recording 50 years ago and another who is strickly 21st century.  And I have electronic music that could’ve been made forty years ago and another born from contemporary aesthetics.

Basia Bulat is a singer who has just released her third album, Tall Tall Shadow.  She’s got a fragile, slightly aged voice, although he’s not quite 30 yet and she plays an instrument that hasn’t been in popular music much since John Sebastian played one with The Lovin’ Spoonful: the autoharp.  But she writes some beautiful heartbreaking songs with lovely atmospheres.

Juliette Commagere, on the other hand is a singer who is surrounded by roots music but goes completely electronic on her new album, Human.  Commagere is married to Joachim Cooder, the son of Ry Cooder and she’s sung on several of Ry Cooder’s albums.  While Ry is known for his roots music, Commagere, plugs in with vintage analog synths sounds and creates an album of moody electro-pop that perfectly frames her coolly sexual voice.  In an Echoes Blindfold test, I played Jon Hassell a track by Ry Cooder called “El UFO Cayó.” With just a couple of notes from the singer he just said, “Ahhh, Juliette.”

Majeure signals its roots in its name, drawn from Tangerine Dream’s album, Force Majeure.  Their 2012 album, Solar Maximum is one of those CDs that sounds like the band sneaked into the Berlin studio of Tangerine Dream circa 1974, just after they’d finished recording Phaedra.  It’s sequencers on stun for this band.  Majeure is touring this fall with Mono.

The Orb is a creation of 1990s ambient music, although the influence of Tangerine Dream isn’t far behind on a 2007 album called The Dream.  Neither is early Pink Floyd and Gong on the track we’ll hear, “Codes,” which features glissando guitar from Gong’s Steve Hillage, who we’ve also been hearing a lot on Echoes lately with his System 7 group.  The Orb is touring the US this fall including an appearance at the Mountain Oasis Music Summit.

It’s all a dream tonight on Echoes.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Sign up for Echoes CD of the Month Club.   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!

Ulrich Schnauss & Mark Peters on Echoes

Hear Ulrich Schnauss & Mark Peters Interview Tonight on Echoes.

It’s been an Ulrich Schnauss year here at Echoes.  He had a CD of the Month in February this year with A Long Way to Fall and we interviewed him as well.  Then he played live for us in early September and now he’s back again.  It turned out that when he came in to play live he also had a forthcoming album with guitarist Mark Peters from Engineers, and it just so happened that Peters was tagging along with Schnauss on tour.  So I sat them down to talk about their music for an alternate reality.

Ulrich Schnauss is one of the icons of downtempo electronica with albums like A Strangely Isolated Place and A Long Way to Fall.  Mark Peters is a bit less well known in this country.  He has a band called Engineers in England who play a dreamy brand of shoegaze music.  He and Ulrich Schnauss hit it off so well that Schnauss actually joined Engineers.  But the two musicians have also released a pair of duet albums for guitar and electronics.  Their latest is Tomorrow is Another Day.

Ulrich Schnauss Live on Echoes

Highlights:
Mark Peters on The Beach Boys: It hit me really hard when I was kind of first learning to play guitar at 15.  And then I’d just become a super nut about it and every last bootleg, every little clip on YouTube, everything is just…and I think it’s just, you know, kind of a classical type complexity that’s just so interesting.
John Dilibeto: You’re hardcore, aren’t you?
Mark Peters: Big time.  Bit of a geek.  Yeah, Ulrich’s got his head in his hands.

Ulrich Schnauss on altered states: That’s the point at the end of the day, like you’re trying to create something that doesn’t reflect the reality that surrounds you, but something that actually creates the opposite, a counterpoint to reality, an alternative or a utopia.

Hear Ulrich Schnauss and Mark Peters tonight on Echoes.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Sign up for Echoes CD of the Month Club.   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!

Echoes 24 Years Ago Today!

In 1989 the World Wide Web was invented
The Berlin Wall fell.
The Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Denmark legalized civil unions between same-sex couples

They were all ahead of the curve.

And so was Echoes which launched on this day 24 years ago, on October 2, 1989

Today on Echoes, you’ll hear all the music from that very first show, from beginning to end, in sequence.  Has Echoes changed?  Sure.  Has the music lasted? Definitely.

Andreas Vollenweider & John Diliberto on Echoes

Let’s look at some of the artists.  The first track you’ll hear is Tangerine Dream’s “Tiergarten” from their album, Le Parc.  The Dream is still going after all these years.

Swiss harpist Andreas Vollenweider was at his peak in 1989 when we played  Down to the Moon.  He’s appeared on the show many times with interviews and live performances.

Japanese American shakukachi player Masakazu Yoshizawa is one of only two musicians on this list who isn’t still with us.  The other artist who left us is Colin Walcott.  He was the world music soul of the band, Oregon, the gold standard of chamber world fusion.  Ralph Towner, Paul McCandless and Glenn Moore continue the Oregon tradition to this day.

Pat Metheny on Echoes

George Wallace was pretty obscure in 1989 when we played his electronic album, Communion, and he still is although he also continues making music with a 2013 album, Soul Ascending and a reissue of his Sacred Earth recording.

And speaking of ahead of the curve, Pat Metheny has always been in his own orbit. He was the first interview run on Echoes.  He’s been a perennial on Echoes playlists and still continues to surprise.  His 2013 Tap album will be near the top of my best CDs of 2013.

Three of what we considered to be the California electronic quartet appeared in this Echoes. Michael Stearns was one of the leading lights of new electronic music in 1989 with expansive recordings Like Planetary Unfolding and Encounter.  His Floating Whispers album was one of his prettiest and most melodic.  Steve Roach was something of a protege of Stearns for a moment and Stearns played on at least one of Roach’s albums..  He wasn’t actually played on the first show, but Roach wrote the theme song we used back then.  There was a stretch into the early 21 century when Roach always had an album in rotation on Echoes. We’ll hear from one of the classics from the year before Echoes launched, Dreamtime Return.  Robert Rich was often mentioned in the same breadth as Roach and they recorded two albums together.  Rich went on to develop his own rhythmically propulsive, melodically sinuous, organically woven music and that sound really began with his album Rainforest, which was also released in 1989. All three played the Ambicon Festival this past summer. (The 4th member of this quartet was Kevin Braheny).

Michael Stearns

Robert Rich Recording for Echoes in his studio.

John Diliberto & Steve Roach

 

Jonn Serrie is often considered part of that group of 1980s space/New Age/electronic artists. He was plugged into the electronic zeitgeist in 1989.  His second album,  Flightpath was released that year and it remains my favorite of his.  He’s also still recording and released a nice album called Sunday Morning Peace in 2011.

The other John & Vangelis

And all of those musicians bowed at the feet of Vangelis.  He was one of the reasons we created Echoes.  His mix of classical orchestration, choral voices and wild space synthesizer provided music of one of the most varied careers that includes film scores and his massive orchestral-choral work, Mythodea.   Mask remains one of his most dynamic albums.

Progressive Rock is in the Echoes DNA and you hear it with King Crimson’s “Sheltering Sky” one of the most timeless pieces recorded by this long-lived, continually shifting band.  And in 2013, Robert Fripp has announced a new edition of the group.

Will Ackerman & John Diliberto

Would their be Echoes without Will Ackerman and Windham Hill Records.  I’m not so sure.  He launched the finger-style revolution taking it out of the folk domain of Leo Kottke and John Fahey and into the popular consciousness.  Ackerman is still at it.  He won his first Grammy in 2004 and continues to make music and produce notable artists like Jeff Oster and Todd Boston. We’ll hear something from Ackerman’s album of duets, Past Light.

Philip Glass’s minimalism was a big part of Echoes early on and Glass is ever-prolific, releasing several new albums a year.   1000 Airplanes on the Roof is one of his lesser known works, but it’s epic.  Singer Meredith Monk emerged form the same downtown New York scene as Glass, creating a music that tapped into primal spirits.  And she’s still doing it.  Dolmen Music remains my favorite album from her.

Roger Eno in Clerestory

Probably the most influential album we played 24 years ago was Peter Gabriel’s Passion, his score to the movie, The Last Temptation of Christ.  Who knew in 1989 that this album would influence so many musicians, virtually creating the techno-tribal and world fusion genres.

Patrick O’Hearn’s Eldorado was also released in 1989.  It’s a brilliant recording of electronic world fusion with O’Hearn using Middle Eastern modalities and musicians on several tracks, presaging the whole Persian fusion movement of artists like Vas, Niyaz, Axiom of Choice, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Transglobal Underground and more.

And speaking of world fusion, there was Yas-Kaz, a Japanese multi-instrumentalist who put out some beautiful recordings in the 1980s.  Steve Roach created a collection from them called Darkness in Dreams on the Celestial Harmonies label.

Peter Buffett’s The Waiting is one of the more quintessentially New Age albums here, while Roger Eno’s Between Tides was one of the early signpost albums of ambient chamber music.  Erik Wollo was among the first of the onslaught of wonderful Norwegian electronic musicians and he has been a continuous presence on Echoes.  Traces is from 1985 and it holds up so well that Spotted Peccary re-released it in 2012.

I think the best thing I can say about this playlist is, as much as Echoes has changed, there is nothing on here that I wouldn’t play on the show today.

So enjoy this flashback to the beginning tonight on Echoes.  Thanks to all the radio stations who have run the show, whether they are original stations like WXPN, Philadelphia, or newcomers like WDET, Detroit.   And a special thanks to all of you who have been with us on the journey, whether you were there in 1989 or just discovered us tonight.

See tonight’s playlist here.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Support Echoes by becoming a member of the Echoes Sound Circle.  We can only continue another 24 years with help from listeners like you.

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 donationsare 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.   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.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00BIUOH1O/echoes

Celtic Returns, Prog on the Side, Experiment into Ambient

We’ve got a lot of new music from old friends today on Echoes.  Clannad, the legendary Irish band and one of the groups that launched the Celtic renaissance in the 1980s, returns with their first album in 15 years.  It’s called Nádúr,  Gaelic for nature, and it brings the core members of Clannad back together, including singer Moya Brennan, for those lush harmonies that have made songs like “Theme from Harry’s Game” so enduring.

Jeff Greinke’s career isn’t as storied as Clannad’s, but he’s been releasing ambient and experimental recordings since the mid-1980s.  He has returned with an album that is his most accessible and also most beautiful.  Scenes from a Train is a gorgeous and subtle album of ambient chamber music with Greinke using live, mostly acoustic musicians.  It’s the last song of the night so stay up for it.  But even if you don’t it’s in heavy rotation so you’ll be hearing it a lot.

Colin Edwin returns to the show.  He’s the bassist for Porcupine Tree and we heard him extensively earlier this year on the album he recorded with Jon Durant, Burnt Belief.  On a new EP he teams up with Italian drummer/multi-instrumentalist Alesandro Pedretti.  If you liked Burnt Belief, you’ll like the dark, throbbing but melodic moves of this self-titled EP, Endless Tapes.

Finally, Kitaro returns with a new album, Final Call.  It’s an ominous title and when I got that as the subject line in a promotional email, I thought I had missed out on something.  Kitaro has retired from his thus far four volume Sacred Journey of Ku-Kai trek to make an album that contemplates the state of the world.  You’ll hear all the Kitaro signatures here, but the cut we]’ll play tonight is a little different.  Kitaro has always been lumped in with space music, but he’s rarely used that iconic sequencer sound of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze.  But he does on a track called “Traveler.”

That’s just part of the trip tonight, on Echoes.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

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Philadelphia Electronics & English Dream-Pop

Ian Boddy’s Liverdelphia

Tonight on Echoes, Music recorded live in Philadelphia when we hear music from Ian Boddy’s Liverdelphia.  The title sounds a bit like a disease, but it’s an awkward amalgamation of Liverpool and Philadelphia where this album was recorded live in concert.  We’ll also hear new music by the English dream-pop band, Still Corners off their gorgeous album, Strange Pleasures.  It’s our pleasure today on Echoes.  Here’s some video teasers.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

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