Today on Echoes, we’ll be hearing Lanterna playing live (Tomorrow for Philly listeners on WXPN).
Lanterna is essentially one guy, Henry Frayne and he’s been around for about two decades, playing in Cocteau Twins influenced groups like The Moon Seven Times and Area out of the midwest.
Henry has a new CD called Desert Ocean.
Lanterna follows in the tradition of people like the Cocteau’s Robin Guthrie, Robert Fripp, Michael Brook and Jeff Pearce, turning themselves into one-man ambient bands with loops and delays, but playing everything in real time. The renditions of tunes you’ll hear Lanterna perform are different than those on his albums. There’s no drums, no overdubbing. Just Henry and his electric guitar, weaving a delicate filigree that’s come to define Ambient Americana with his subtle finger-picked lines evoking wide open spaces, whether they be the American plains or in your head.
Despite the deep pensiveness of his music, except when he brings in the drums of Eric Gebow from the Blue Man Group, Henry is a tall, lanky, self-effacing musician, who doesn’t have a lot of pretenses. But his work has caught the attention of people like Hector Zazou with whom he’s recorded. Hear what Zazou hears for yourself when Lanterna plays live on Echoes.
The Nightly Music Soundscape
