It was a double dose of Amiina and Slow Six this weekend. Earlier, I wrote about their Echoes Living Room Concert performances. But I also got to see them in regular concert performances, both on the same day. There were only about 60 people at the Slow Six concert this past Saturday night at The…
Program Highlights
Ambient Chamber Music-Slow Six & Amiina
It’s ambient chamber music madness today on Echoes. We have two acts coming in whom we’ve wanted for a while. Even though neither have a new CD, opportunity knocked and we opened the door. Right now I have Slow Six warming up in the echoes Living Room. Slow Six is Christopher Tignor and 4 other…
Reviews & Commentary
Soundtracks-Reinhold Heil & Johnny Klimek vs. John Williams
We’ve been following Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek for a few years now. I loved their integral score to Run Lola Run, composed with director Tom Tykwer. Their ambient soundtracks to The Princess and the Warrior and One Hour Photo put them on the Echoes map. We’ve been wanting to interview them for some time…
Reviews & Commentary
Roots of Echoes: Star’s End
Echoes celebrated its 17th birthday, last week, but Star’s End celebrated its 30th Birthday. Philadelphia space music fans know Star’s End for it five hours of space and ambient music every Saturday Night/Sunday Morning from 1-6AM on 88.5, WXPN. It’s one of the reasons Philadelphia is considered such a hotbed of electronic music. I created…
Reviews & Commentary
Echoes Turns 17
In our excitement about Steve Reich’s 70th Birthday we skidded right by our own. Echoes has been on the air for 17 years now. That’s not as momentous as a 70th, not as alliterative a Sweet 16, not as significant as the voting age of 18 or drinking age of 21, and has no decennial…
Reviews & Commentary
STEVE REICH PUSH-STARTED MY VW BUG AND MINIMALISM
We celebrate Steve Reich on his 70th birthday with this anecdote that goes back to the days of drumming and something Reich probably won’t remember.
Reviews & Commentary
LA Excursion: BT, Album Leaf, Devo, Heede
I’m heading back from LA today after gathering some great interviews. After several false starts, cancellations and venue movements, I interviewed BT. It’s interesting that in the dance and film music worlds, BT is very well known, but outside of that, people seem only vaguely aware of him. His recent music has been extremely impressionistic…
Reviews & Commentary
Echoes In LA-BT, Devo, Fritz Heede, Album Leaf
I’m off on another expedition, this time to LA for a somewhat eclectic trip. Curiously, there’s no one new this time out. They are all artists I’ve interviewed before. I wonder if that says something about the state of Echoes music in LA. Running backwards, on Sunday, I’ll be talking to Fritz Heede. He put…
Reviews & Commentary
Jade Warrior Revisited
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Before Peter Gabriel moved from drum machines to Senegalese drummers, and when Andreas Vollenweider was doing music for poetry readings, Jade Warrior was orchestrating a world fusion built up from a host of exotic instruments and a frightening amount of overdubs.
Reviews & Commentary
Richard Burmer Sails into the Aether
Another musician has left us and this one is closer to home. Richard Burmer was an unassumingly brilliant artist and one of the original Southern California synthesists along with Steve Roach, Michael Stearns and Kevin Braheny. But Richard always had a stronger interest in melody, a dramatic flair in arrangements and a rhythmic vitality that…