Tangents-Echoes Live CD

All Tangents Lead to Echoes

Hear ALL of Tangents tonight on Echoes.

Tangents is the latest collection of live music performances from the Echoes Living Room  and once again, it’s a seamless trip through the Echoes soundscape with exclusive live recordings.

Centering Tangents is Ozric Tentacles who absolutely ripped our heads off with their live performance.  Spinning out synthesizer swirls, grooving drums and trance bass, they literally dropped the floor out of the Echoes Living Room and sent us hurtling through space.

Carving a different dimension in space  is the German-Dutch trio of Broekhuis, Keller & Schönwälder. Playing “Red One,” they traverse a largely improvised soundscape on synthesizers and electronic percussion, recalling the heady days of German space music.  Like most retro-space groups, they clock in with the longest track, although it’s abbreviated compared to most of their compositions which can stretch over 30 minutes in length.

Trumpeter Jeff Oster conjures his own spaces, improvising in loops and effects with bassist Michael Manring and electric slide guitarist Carl Weingarten.  You can hear hints of Miles Davis circa Get Up With It as these three musicians create an intuitive improvisation of viscous colors.

Acoustic guitarists are always a part of Echoes and Living Room Concert CDs, but even they like to plug in and process their sound.  Todd Boston spins a hypnotic web of guitar and a touch of flute with “Celtic Heart.”  Despite its name, “Celtic Heart” is a raga-infused track that builds from a tamboura-like drone under meditative flute, gradually evolving into a web of acoustic guitar filigree that

made it a perfect opening for Tangents.  Italy’s Sergio Altamura is also a looper, creating an acoustic chamber guitar ensemble complete with percussion, all played in real time in a gorgeously serene piece.  Of the solo guitarists, only Glenn Jones plays it straight, at least in terms of acoustics.  Otherwise, he took his 12-string guitar into melodic mazes that make him one of the leading bearers of the John Fahey, American Primitive Guitar torch. What a perfectly pure ending to the journey of Tangents.

Tangents may have more singers than any previous Echoes CD as dream pop floats into the show’s soundscape.  Low Roar, the performance persona of Ryan Karaziya, brought his moody, often heartrending songs into the Echoes living room, channeling Nick Drake into a more atmospheric sound.  Frankie Rose had one of the more rocking sessions on Echoes, including her anthemic track “Moon in My Mind” with that great Echoes & the Bunnymen reverb guitar and charge-up-the-hill chorus.  And finally, Johanna and the Dusty Floor brought a mixture of bittersweet nostalgia to the Echoes living room with “Heavy Heart.”

A couple of acoustic chamber groups also grace Tangents.  The new acoustic trio, One Alternative makes their second appearance with one of guitarist Mark Oppenlander’s songs, “Sweetness-n-Light.”  They’ve been around for 30 years, but around even longer than them is Wall Matthews who was making ambient records in the mid-1970s with the Entourage Theater and Music Ensemble.  He came into to play the delicate chamber music off his CD The Dreaming Light.

There’s always one artist on these discs who, on the surface, doesn’t seem to fit in, but the serene and soulful sound of Senegalese kora player Ablaye Cissoko and German trumpeter Volker Goetze goes as directly to the heart as anyone on Tangents.

I’m sitting in the actual Echoes Record Den right now where many of these tracks were recorded.  As I listen to Tangents, these musicians seem to appear before my eyes, whether it’s Broekhuis, Keller & Schönwälder amongst a tangle of wires and keyboards or Cissoko & Goetze communing with just a trumpet and a kora.

Tangents is here because I want you to have that same experience. As Ryan Karaziya sings on Low Roar’s “Friends Make Garbage, Good Friends Take It Out”: “What’s the fun when you can’t share what you have found.”

Travel through Tangents and hear music that will change your world and send you off into new tangents. You can get it here.

~© 2012 John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Sign up for the Echoes CD of the Month Club and get Tangents now as a bonus for your membership now! 

Sign up forEchoes CD of the Month Club and youwill not only receive the November CD pick, Jeff Johnson & Phil Keaggy’s WaterSky, but Tangents as well.  With the Echoes CD of the Month Club, you get great CDs like  WaterSky coming to you each month.  Join now and you’ll get Watersky plus Tangents. Follow the link to the Echoes CD of the Month Club  and see what you’ve been missing.

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.

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.