Tosca‘s No Hassle leads the Echoes Top 25 for June.
Check down to number 16 for next months Top 25 winner. That will be Moby and Wait for Me, one of the most beautifully heartbreaking albums of the year. It’s the Echoes CD of the Month for July.
A nice companion piece for Wait for Me is one of this month’s surprises, All India Radio’s A Low High. It’s a project run by Martin Kennedy and we loved his last AIR album, The Fall, but that was more of a trip-hop outing with singer Leona Prue. On the Australian artist’s new CD, A Low High, Prue has disapeared and in her place are lush ambient instrumentals with an Americana tinge, mainly from the pedal steel guitar of Graham Lee from The Triffids. A Low High is a highly overlooked album of deeply haunting moods.
The “ENO” halo is in full effect this month. His guitarist, Leo Abrahams, had our CD of the Month for May, The Grape and the Grain and it’s still in the top ten for June. Eno keyboardist Jon Hopkins is still around with Insides. Eno collaborator, Harold Budd returns on a new CD with guitarist Clive Wright called Candylion and another set of former Eno collaborators, Cluster, have a new CD called Qua.
Live appearances and interviews with Matthew Schoening, Mandrake Project, Jeff Ball and Inbar Bakal all helped push their CDs into the Top Ten.
Check out the complete Echoes Top 25 for June, which has a bunch of links to interview features and reviews.
John Diliberto ((( echoes )))