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…
Program Highlights
My Day in Music 5 Years Ago: U2, Lisa Gerrard, Hilmar Orn Hilmarson
We’ve been asking musicians about their reactions to 9-11 over the course of the last five years. Some of the best responses appear in our 9-11 memorial show, A Requiem Soundscape, Echoes Remembers September 11. Others appear on our website on the Requiem Soundscape page. I was surprised how few musicians heard music in their…
Reviews & Commentary
Pat Metheny with Anna Maria Jopek On YouTube
I feel behind the curve on this one, but someone on the XPN boards clued me into this cool video with Pat Metheny and Polish singer Anna Maria Jopek performing Metheny’s “Are You Going With Me” live. It’s a phenomenal version. I think she’s a pop singer turned jazz chanteuse, but she’s done at least…
Reviews & Commentary
Pip Pyle Passes: Legendary Progressive Rock drummer of Gong, National Health and Hatfield of the North
It was only a few months ago that I saw Pip Pyle driving behind a drum set at Nearfest, playing the first ever concert in American by Hatfield and the North. Pip was the pulse that drove you through the psychedelic journey’s of Gong and he was the rhythm shape shifter negotiating quantum rhythms in…
Reviews & Commentary
Lost Soundtracks: Mark Isham’s Invincible mauled by 70’s Hard Rock
If you were among those who made Invincible the number one movie the last two weekends in a row, then you may have noticed, buried somewhere between the Jim Croce, Ted Nugent and Bachman Turner Overdrive, a subtle and moving score by Mark Isham. He has two main themes in the film. One is a…
Reviews & Commentary
Human Beat Box-Lasse Gjertsen goes Hyperactive
I know all of you were tuned into the Teen Choice Awards recently so you might have caught this already, but in case you’er like most people over 15, you probably missed it. In researching some of the claims made by John Foxx in his recent Echoes interview, I stumbled across a myspace site that…
Reviews & Commentary
Loreena McKennitt Returns
It’s been nearly a decade since Loreena McKennitt’s last studio album, The Book of Secrets. But after some personal travails, including the death of her fiancé, she has returned with an album that picks up where Secrets left off. On An Ancient Muse, McKennitt is still mining middle eastern themes and creating exotic stories of…
Reviews & Commentary
John Foxx Today and a Quarter Century Back: Still Totally Wired After All These Years
Next week we’ll be running two features on John Foxx. He’s not a mainstream Echoes, artist, but he’s a musician whom I’ve admired for nearly 30 years now. We almost never do two part features, but John just has too many good things to say and I also wanted to give a retrospective profile and…