After announcing that they were resurrecting NEARFEST in 2012, the festival organizers have decided that 2012 will mark the last NEARFEST. In true ProgRock fashion, they’ve labeled it NEARFEST APOCALYPSE. Prog was never known for understatement. Well, like just about every classic prog group they’ve presented over the years who were resurrected from the grave,…
CD of the Month
Every Silver Lining Has A Cloud & Johanna and the Dusty Floor.
From Symphonic Guitar Distortion to Ethereal Songs. We’re offering two CDs as bonuses to new members of the Echoes CD of the Month Club. Either of them could’ve been club selections themselves. EVERY SILVER LINING HAS A CLOUD An echo of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” theme with spoken word is a deceptive opening to this deeply…
Reviews & Commentary
NEARFEST RETURNS IN 2012
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, or maybe King Crimson rising from Robert Fripp‘s mind, NEARFEST, the venerable progressive rock festival, will return in 2012 after cancelling the 2011 show due to poor ticket sales. With the original founders back at the helm, look for the festival to return to it’s mix of vintage…
Reviews & Commentary
Mike Oldfield Mentor David Bedford Heads for Star’s End
Composer, keyboardist and Mike Oldfield Collaborator David Bedford Passes I was sad to hear of the passing of David Bedford, the English composer who had a deep engagement with progressive rock in the early 1970s. It actually started a little earlier in Kevin Ayers and The Whole World, a rollicking post-psychedelic, pre-progressive rock, musically insane…
Reviews & Commentary
Ólafur Arnalds’ Living Room Songs.
Ólafur Arnalds releases a new song every day for 7 days, all recorded in his living room. The songs will be recorded and filmed live in the living room of his Reykjavík apartment and released instantly for FREE as streamed videos and MP3 downloads.Did he take a page from Echoes‘s Living Room Concerts which he…
CD of the Month
Patrick O’Hearn Transitions Echoes CD of the Month.
Echoes Icon Patrick O’Hearn returns with Transitions, The Echoes CD of the Month for October From the opening notes of “Reaching Land,” an echoing piano against a delayed pulse, it’s obvious that Transitions is a Patrick O’Hearn album. It brings up memories of CDs like Indigo and Metaphor with its dark melancholy, hushed lyricism and synth…
Best Of
Echoes Top 25 Surrenders to Jeff Oster.
Jeff Oster’s seductive album of lounge electronica, Surrender, leads the Echoes Top 25 for September. After a month of repeats it was great to get into new music this past month and a lot of it is in the Echoes Top 25. Jon Durant leaps to the head with his new album, Dance of the…
Reviews & Commentary
Johanna & The Dusty Floor Sweep In.
Tonight on Echoes (01/06/2012) I’ll be interviewing an exciting new singer-songwriter, Johanna Cranitch who records as Johanna & the Dusty Floor. When I heard her new album, Northern Lights, I was immediately enticed by this Australian born singer, who first reminded me of Kate Bush. She even covers Bush’s “Cloudbusting.” But the more I listen,…
Reviews & Commentary
Hype Machine Building for New Sigur Ros Live!
Okay, that’s a little cynical, but the whole leaking out of free tracks, tantalizing fans with little tidbits and generally treating us like greyhounds chasing rabbits is getting a bit tedious. But then this is the iconic, beyond hip band, Sigur Rós who have released some of the most idiosyncratic and uniguely intoxicating music in…
Reviews & Commentary
A Produce is Transported R.I.P.
by John Diliberto 9/10/2011 A Produce A.K.A. Barry Craig Passes Barry Craig passed away on September 4, 2011. You may not have known him by that name, but you might be familiar with the music he produced over the last two and a half decades as A Produce. He was featured heavily on Echoes, especially…