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…
Tag: Ambient
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…
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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…
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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…
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Hector Zazou Dies: Ambient Chamber World Music Pioneer
Hector Zazou was a quirky French composer who worked quietly in the background, creating music that sent subtle ripples across the music firmament. He died this past Monday, September 8 at the age of 60. Most of the hipster community discovered him in the mid-1990s when he released the albums, Sahara Blue and Songs from…
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Lights Out Asia and Near the Parenthesis
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http://media.blubrry.com/echoespodcast/www.xpn.org/podcasts/echoes/echoes20080910.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSSLights Out Asia and Near the Parenthesis create an ambient rock You can hear an audio version of this review, with music. The n5MD record label began with a suspect business plan. They were going to release their music only on mini-disc. Although commercially that format went the way of…
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Thoughts in Sound: Cage, Eno, Jarrett, Riley
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http://media.blubrry.com/echoespodcast/www.xpn.org/podcasts/echoes/echoes20080820.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSSThoughts in Sound from musicians at the bleeding edges of music including John Cage, Brian Eno, Terry Riley and Keith Jarrett. You can also hear an Audio Version of this blog, with music. Every musician plays notes, but some of them think about the nature of sound a…
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Genuflections and Reflections at Ash Ra Tempel
I always thought of Manuel Göttsching, who records under his own name and more famously as Ashra and Ash Ra Tempel, as the most soulful of the Berlin Trinity: Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel. His compositions had a warmth the others lacked and his guitar leads flitted between dangerous micro-second precision on Inventions for…
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Harold Budd & Clive Wright: A Song For Lost Blossoms
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http://media.blubrry.com/echoespodcast/www.xpn.org/podcasts/echoes/echoes20080618.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSSFor a guy who supposedly retired 4 years ago, Harold Budd is sure putting out a lot of records. He’s just offered up a new slice of gauzy atmosphere, hazy keyboards and unguitar-like electric guitar with Clive Wright. It’s called A Song for Lost Blossoms . This works…
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Echoes Top 25 for July: Marconi Union first Download recording to crack Top 5
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http://media.blubrry.com/echoespodcast/www.xpn.org/podcasts/echoes/echoes20080730.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSSAmbient chamber music still dominates the Echoes Top 25 for August, but for the first time, a download only album cracks the the Echoes Top 5. That CD is the purely ambient A Lost Connection by Marconi Union. Their album, Distance, from 3 years ago was among our…