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…
Tag: Ambient
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…
Reviews & Commentary
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…
Reviews & Commentary
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…
Reviews & Commentary
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…