PRI: Echoes
A weekly musician interview from Echoes, the soundscape of ambient, new acoustic and world fusion music on public radio and on-line.
Visit Show Website http://www.echoes.org/Recently Aired
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Echoes feature - Slow Meadow
Slow Meadow is the performance name of Matt Kidd. He ...
Slow Meadow is the performance name of Matt Kidd. He started out as a guitarist playing in church and Christian music bands before venturing out on his own ambient journey. He recorded a couple of albums as Aural Method before falling in with the ambient guitar band Hammock. He emerged from that with his own approach to ambient chamber music, mixing effects-laden guitar with strings and piano to create a sound like Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings sent into deep space. He just released his debut album under the name Slow Meadow, which includes a collaboration with Hammock. We walk through the fields of Matt Kidd's Slow Meadow.
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Echoes feature - Michael Spriggs
It's not all country picking in Nashville. Michael Spriggs is ...
It's not all country picking in Nashville. Michael Spriggs is an A-list session guitarist in Music City who has played on, and written, dozens of country hits. But when he goes home, he plugs in to a different sound, turning country into Ambient Americana, with touches of Celtic music. He'll talk as passionately about Sigur Ros as about Chet Atkins. Spriggs has just released a new CD called Back to 1 that continues his instrumental explorations, including a bonus CD of a long composition in the style of Steve Roach’s Structures from Silence. Michael Spriggs talks about his ambient country roads.
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Echoes feature - Chad Kettering
Chad Kettering started out as a classical trumpet player, but ...
Chad Kettering started out as a classical trumpet player, but something happened on the way to the concert hall. He discovered synthesizers and started creating an orchestral electronic sound that’s part progressive rock and part New Age. His latest album is an epic journey of self-discovery called Pathways that is full of symphonic orchestrations and propulsive rhythms that recall Vangelis. Chad Kettering talks about the path he’s taken.
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Echoes feature - Arstidir
Arstidir is a band from Iceland with an organic, acoustic ...
Arstidir is a band from Iceland with an organic, acoustic sound that has roots in the harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Playing guitars, violin, piano and cello, these musicians create introspective songs on their latest album, Hvel, along with vocal harmonies that will leave you breathless. At times they sound like they could have come right out of the 1960s folk revival, but this is a modern band whose influences include Philip Glass and Olafur Arnalds. In fact, Arnalds produced their second album, and their cellist played with Arnalds on his Echoes session 5 years ago. They talk about their evolution, and we get a tour of their psychedelic tour bus.
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Echoes feature - Digitonal
Andrew Dobson started performing as Digitonal in 1997 and began ...
Andrew Dobson started performing as Digitonal in 1997 and began recording with the 2002 album, 23 Things Fall Apart. With the addition of Egyptian violinist Samy Bishai, Digitonal hit its stride with the 2008 album, Save Your Light for Darker Days. That album was a definitive ambient chamber music exploration with haunting melodies and enveloping atmospheres. Bishai created soaring solos and lush orchestrations while Dobson mixed synthesizer moods with sometimes searing, anguished clarinet playing. They found a common ground between chilled electronic grooves and the modern classicism of Steve Reich and Arvo Part. That sound continues on their first album in seven years, Beautiful Broken.
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Echoes feature - Chronotope Project
Chronotope Project is Jeffrey Ericson Allen, a musician who has ...
Chronotope Project is Jeffrey Ericson Allen, a musician who has made a few transformations in his life. He began his recording career as New Age artist Jeff Defty, before taking on his family name as a person, and Chronotope Project as an artistic identity. He also started out on cello before hearing electronic sounds from Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream and The Orb. As Chronotope Project, he mixes mystical, philosophical, fantasy and sci-fi imagery into haunting soundscapes. He’s just released a new album called Dawn Treader. We talk to Jeffrey Ericson Allen about a music of Time and space.
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Echoes feature - Steve Roach: Skeleton Keys
Steve Roach is an iconic electronic musician from Southern California ...
Steve Roach is an iconic electronic musician from Southern California via the Arizona deserts. He long ago transcended his roots in the early electronic music of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, to create his own distinctive sound explorations. He's the Doyen of Drone, the Architect of Techno-Tribal and the Sultan of Sequencers. It's that later sound that brings him to us to talk about his album, Skeleton Keys, a new exploration of sequencer sounds using modular analog synthesizers. Steve Roach talks about the genesis of this probe into a hypnotic and kinetically pulsing sound world.
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Echoes feature - Ascendant
Ascendant is a duo of Californian musicians exploring the Big ...
Ascendant is a duo of Californian musicians exploring the Big Bang, and other mysteries of the universe, through meticulously-crafted synthesizer soundscapes. They live hundreds of miles apart, but don’t find that to be an obstacle, exchanging ideas and sound files over the internet. They’ve just released their second album Aethereal Code, which depicts the early organization of the universe with upbeat, melodic electronica. Don Tyler and Chris Bryant of Ascendant talk about their cosmic collaboration, on Echoes.
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Echoes feature - Cluster - Remembering Dieter Moebius
In the world of progressive space and ambient music, the ...
In the world of progressive space and ambient music, the German group called Cluster are eccentric wizards, musical alchemists who defied traditions, even the ones they helped create during the space music days of 1970s Berlin. Hans Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius have released dozens of albums as Cluster, and under their own names, over the last 45 years. Now, one half of this influential band has flipped the off-switch for the last time. Dieter Moebius died on July 20 at the age of 71. We remember Dieter Moebius through a look back at an interview with Cluster from 1997.
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Echoes feature - Olafur Arnalds
When we first started playing Olafur Arnalds five or so ...
When we first started playing Olafur Arnalds five or so years ago, he was a little-known secret. But in the last couple of years, he has exploded as an avatar of a new neo-classical sound, ambient chamber music. He’s been especially prolific in the last year, releasing three albums in three different genres: The Chopin Project, with pianist Alice Sara Ott, the all-electronic Kiasmos, and the soundtrack to Broadchurch.
