Tino Izzo’s Morning Scapes Heads Up the Echoes Top 25 CDs for January.
Tino Izzo’s Morning Scapes was an Echoes Top 25 CD even before it became the Echoes CD of the Month (read review and hear trax). It leads our January list as Echoes returned to a more normal mode after December’s holiday programming. It heads up a top 25 that has no particular rhyme, reason or trend, except there’s some pretty great music there that fits into the chilled mode of Echoes.
Of the new pleasures for this month the best came from a new band and an old friend. Hans Christian is the old friend. We played his music when he was recording under his own name in the early 1990s and then followed his beautiful chant-fusion duo, Rasa with singer Kim Waters. Lately, Hans has been going the solo looping cello route, of which he is a master, but on a new CD called Rumi Symphony he went into electro-global-orchestral mode. It’s a double CD. Disc one has Andrew Harvey reciting the poetry of the Persian mystic, Rumi over Christian’s music. He takes an authoritative approach to Rumi’s oft-romantic works. Poetry with music collaborations generally leave me cold. If you want to merge poetry and song, then sing. But the second disc is the music on its own and that would’ve made a brilliant CD. With beds of electro-Persian percussion loops and orchestral strings, Christian plays cello, sarangi and other stringed instruments in a global dreamscape of four, long epic journeys.
The new group is Liftoff and I’ve been enchanted by this Washington DC quartet that takes some of it’s cues from Thievery Corporation. Rob Myers has played guitar and sitar with Thievery for years so that makes sense. The other members play in the dance oriented bands, Fort Knox 5 and Thunderball. But as Liftoff, they create lysergic dreams dappled in 60s pop pastels with new millennium grooves. Echoes of Pink Floyd, Lee Hazelwood and the Strawberry Alarm Clock abound in the intricately crafted songs of their impressive and joyful debut, Sunday Morning Airplay.
Look at #12 for next months likely number one album, Pino Forastiere’s From 1 to 8. We’ll be featuring that on our Monday, February 6 show and you can read a review and hear tracks now right here.
Go here to see the complete Echoes Top 25 for January list with links.
~© 2012 John Diliberto ((( echoes )))
Hear Forastiere’s From 1 to 8 featured on Echoes Monday February 6
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