Jeff Oster has taken his trumpet and flugelhorn into New Age and ambient directions over the years. On his new album, Next, he explores some ambient jazz. He talks about tone, funk and ambience on Echoes.
Hearing Air performing on Jean-Michel Jarre’s forthcoming album, E-Project, reminded me of the great performance they played for us back in 2004. We first interviewed Air back in 1998 when their first album, Moon Safari came out. They’ve been on since then in 2007 with a Blindfold Test in the Echoes Chamber and again in 2012 when we talked about their last album, Le Voyage Dans La Lune. Here’s a couple of pictures from their 2014 session.
On the next Echoes, keyboardist Ryan Farish takes a more rhythmic, driving approach on a new release called Spectrum while the European trio Broekhuis, Keller and Schoenwalder go retro-space.
In the world of space and ambient music, the German group called Cluster are eccentric wizards, musical alchemists who defied traditions, even the ones they helped create in 1970s Berlin. One half of this influential band, Dieter Moebius, died on July 20 at the age of 71. We listen back to an interview with Cluster from 1997, and hear some music from Cluster, Harmonia, and Cluster and Eno.
Heather Woods Broderick is a singer-songwriter detailing a life of transience amidst a music that hovers in moody atmospheres and haunting choruses. Her album, Glider is the the Echoes CD of the Month for July.
We pick the Best Echoes CDs of the Year at the halfway point. John Diliberto then runs them down from #25 to number 1. It begins with a band we’ve never heard of before and ends with an Icon of Echoes. We’ll hear from artists who put out signature releases, others reaching for ambitious highs and still others reflecting on very long careers.
She’s sung with artists like Efterklang and Sharon Van Etten, but now Heather Woods Broderick has an impressive new solo album called Glider.
There are three nights of great Echoes music this week in Philadelphia, when Lanterna, Low Roar and Ozric Tentacles come to town on consecutive nights.
Sonomad is a project of Ramin Sakuria and Geoffrey Brandin, both from the electronica band The Supreme Beings of Leisure.
Swedish singer Rebekka Karijord is a musician of rare vocal gifts and a conceptual approach to music represented on her latest album, We Become Ourselves.