Some bands last for the long haul, some labels struggle. Philadelphians got a surprise performance from the legendary German electronic band Cluster this past Saturday at St. Mary’s Parish Hall as part of The Gatherings series. The show was originally billed as a concert by Tim Story, Dwight Ashley and original Cluster member Hans-Joachim Roedelius…
Category: Reviews & Commentary
Reviews & Commentary
Another Beat Drops: Mitch Mitchell Dead at 61
Mitch Mitchell, the drummer with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, passed away Wednesday, November 13 in Portland, Oregon. Mitchell, along with The Who’s Keith Moon and Cream‘s Ginger Baker changed the role of the rock and roll drummer from a four on the floor dance beat keeper, to a polyrhythmic dervish that pushed the music into…
Reviews & Commentary
Echo Location: Saul Stokes
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http://media.blubrry.com/echoespodcast/www.xpn.org/podcasts/echoes/echoes20081112.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSSIn another time, say the 1950s or 60s, Saul Stokes might have been considered an experimental composer, constructing his own instruments, creating random events, bypassing conventional musical form. But rarely has an experimental composer made music as haunting and soulful as that heard on his new CD, Villa…
Reviews & Commentary
Echo Location: Bombay Dub Orchestra
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http://media.blubrry.com/echoespodcast/www.xpn.org/podcasts/echoes/echoes20081029.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSSA journey into exotica with Bombay Dub Orchestra You can hear an audio version of this blog with music. East-west fusions have been going on since at least the early 1960s when Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar sat down with musicians like jazz saxophonist Bud Shank and classical violinist…
Reviews & Commentary
Ancient Echo: A Return to Galaxie Cygnus-A with Robert Schröder
Despite titles like “Alpha Centauri” and “Fly and Collision of Comas Sola,” in spite of covers that seemed blown out of distant nebulae and regardless of music that, well, just listen to it, Edgar Froese always claimed that Tangerine Dream didn’t make space music. Robert Schröder‘s Galaxie Cygnus-A, however, is a space music album in…
Reviews & Commentary
Twilight of a Titan: Ravi Shankar Plays Kimmel Center at 88
I don’t know how many giants of music were still mounting the concert stage at 88 years of age, but Ravi Shankar did once again last night at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. Performing with his daughter, Anoushka, who is substantially younger than 88 at 27 years old, Shankar once again enthralled the audience, taking…
Reviews & Commentary
The Real Story behind Vangelis
From the Vangelis list, I came across an alternative history of the Greek composer who scored Chariots of Fire and Bladerunner. It’s in the Uncyclopedia. I’m probably the last person on the planet to discover this take-off site on Wikipedia. The Vangelis entry scores a direct hit on the enigmatic composer who is praised as…
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Brian Eno’s iPhone Music
Ever an artist on the bleeding edge, Brian Eno, along with collaborator Peter Chilvers has created a music making program for the iPhone. It’s called Bloom. Bloom runs in two different modes: Listen, which plays an interactive generative composition, and Create, in which you create each note that plays in real time. Each tap of…
Reviews & Commentary
Echo Location: Sumner McKane’s Ambient Americana
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http://media.blubrry.com/echoespodcast/www.xpn.org/podcasts/echoes/echoes20081001.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSSIt’s been several years now that guitarist Sumner McKane has been releasing albums of evocative soundscapes dipped in Americana as cinematic as a John Ford western and as nuanced as Andrew Wyeth painting. But this isn’t pastoral nostalgia. His landscapes are tinged in ambient atmospheres and pulled by…
Reviews & Commentary
Music from the Hearts of Space makes 25th orbit around the sun
Hearts of Space Turns 25.Music from the Hearts of Space is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. They launched their nationally distributed show in 1983 although it originated 10 years earlier from the studios of KPFA in Berkeley, California. To commemorate the anniversary, they’ve put out a CD with the music from their initial syndicated…