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…
Category: Reviews & Commentary
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…
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…