When WXPN, our Philadelphia Echoes affiliate, asked me to submit my Top Ten Albums and songs list, Program Director Bruce Warren said “send us your top ten albums and songs (if you have songs).” I knew what he meant by that parenthetical on a couple of levels. On Echoes, we usually don’t play songs, right?…
Tag: Ambient
Reviews & Commentary
Echo Location: A Synthesist turns Singer-Dean De Benedictis
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http://media.blubrry.com/echoespodcast/www.xpn.org/podcasts/echoes/echoes20081203.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSSElectronic explorer Dean De Benedictis finds Ambient music in his voice (You can hear an audio version of this blog, with music.) If you’re a fan of 80s and 90s TV crime dramas, you might recognize the theme from Matlock, the crime series starring Andy Griffith. It’s written…
Best Of
Echoes Top 25 for November: Bombay Dub Tops
World music fusions bookend the Echoes Top 25 for November as electronic artists and acoustic revisionists dominate the list. Bombay Dub Orchestra, our November CD of the Month, tops the list, (read a full review) followed closely by the independent release from Vic Hennegan, Aqua Vista his homage to space music. You can find out…
Best Of
John Diliberto’s Top 10 CDs for 2008
From Digitonal to the Dandy Warhols, John Diliberto’s Top Ten CDs for 2008. While you’re pondering the Echoes 2008 Listener Poll, I’ve already been solicited for a few year-end lists. I usually give a different list to different outlets. My (uncredited) Amazon.com list is pretty strictly New Age and limited to titles that are actually on…
Program Highlights
Brian Eno on This I Believe
Brian Eno Essay to air on NPR’s This I Believe From NPR Promo: This week, This I Believe features an essay by British musician and record producer Brian Eno. He says singing together in a group is good for the mind,body, spirit and community. “I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, it…
Program Highlights
Echo Location: Vic Hennegan, Tangerine Dream’s Space Child
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http://media.blubrry.com/echoespodcast/www.xpn.org/podcasts/echoes/echoes20081105.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSSArtists like Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze did have musical children and among them is a musician named Vic Hennegan. He makes a music born of technology and reveling in spacious rhythms and layered timbres. (You can hear an audio version of this blog, with music.) Vic Hennegan is…
Best Of
Echoes Top 25 for October: Ambient continues to roll
This month’s Echoes Top 25 continues the roll of ambient music, especially in the Top 10. Sumner McKane‘s What A Great Place to Be is number one by dint of being the Echoes CD of the Month for October, but even without that honor and extra airplay it entails, it was already #4 the previous…
Reviews & Commentary
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…
Best Of
Echoes Top 25 for September-Ambient Leads the Way
Digitonal tops the Echoes Top 25 for September, and will no doubt be near the top for the next several months. But right behind is Marconi Union, topping their own record as the highest placing digital download recording on Echoes. October’s CD of the Month, Sumner McKane’s nostalgia-tinged ambient americana masterpiece, What A Great Place…
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…