Interview Podcast – Echoes

We look back at Wendy Carlos on her 80th Birthday.

You know that a lot of time has passed when your references become dated. With its array of cords and cables crisscrossed in a patchbay, we used to compare it to a telephone switchboard gone crazy. Well, synthesizers don't look like that anymore, the modular renaissance excepted, and most people under thirty wouldn't know what a telephone switchboard was unless they watch the TCM channel a lot.

It was 1968 when Wendy Carlos took her Moog synthesizer and applied it to the contrapuntal 18th century music of Johann Sebastian Bach. The album was called Switched-On Bach and it changed the shape of modern music forever. It took synthesizers out of the world of sound effects and the avant-garde and into the mass market. It's 50 years later and Wendy Carlos first masterwork is now an iconic moment in the history of electronic music. She’s done other great works since. She presaged Brian Eno and Ambient Music with her 1972 album, Sonic Seasonings (from whence we stole the title of our annual Christmas show). Her Beauty in the Beast was a manifesto for the synthesizer in the global village as Carlos digitally hand-crafted her own global orchestra coupling hybrid instruments and timbres that are remarkably true to form, from the roaring Tibetan trumpets that open the album to the Balinese xylophones and suling flutes.

She only did a few film scores, but they are legendary. A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Tron were signal works in film scoring.

10 Years ago we did a feature on her 70th birthday. In the Echoes Podcast, we update it for her 80th Birthday drawing from 30 years of interviews with Wendy Carlos.

Listen to our earlier Podcast on the 50th Anniversary of Switch-On Bach

Read our Post on Four Switch -On Masterworks by Wendy Carlos.

In the Echoes Podcast, we get all Medieval on you. Remember when Gothic chant was all the rage in the 1990s? Albums featuring Benedictine Monks and Abbess Hildegard von Bingen hymns were heard in all kinds of configurations by artists, like Sequentia, Richard Souther, Vox and Enigma. A band called Voxfire continues that tradition in the 21st century, taking Medieval chants and turning them into free-floating ambient expanses with beautiful vocals. We talk with the members of Voxfire who infuse their chants with ambient moods, minimalist expanses and even blues harmonica.

In the Echoes Podcast, we go out to the park with oboist and composer Jill Haley. Her parks have names like Yellowstone, Glacier, Zion, and Badlands. She takes up residence in National Parks, and composes music inspired by the landscapes and her photographs. Haley has played on numerous Will Ackerman productions and is a founding member of the acoustic fusion group, One Alternative.  We talk to her about her latest album, The Winds of Badlands, and her many other recordings inspired by National Parks. Take a walk through the parks with Jill Haley in the Echoes Podcast. And watch out for our Echoes Acoustic Thanksgiving program with Jill Haley and her trio playing live.

In the Echoes Podcast, it’s vampires and dangerous love when we talk with Natasha Khan of Bat for Lashes. She’s been making dreamy, electronically draped moody songs since her 2006 debut, Fur and Gold. The English singer moved from England to LA a few years ago, but her music is still pretty moody and Gothic. On her new album, Lost Girls, she embroiders themes from movies and vampires into personal songs about love and loss. We'll have our crosses up when we talk to Bat for Lashes on Echoes. Check out her video for Hunger.

It's a 3-Part Echoes Podcast with Hugar, King Crimson's 50th and a Remembrance of Erik Scott

First we enter the chill of Iceland for an interview with Hugar. The ambient chamber music duo recently released their second album Varða. It was the Echoes CD of the Month in September. It’s music inspired by the landscapes of Iceland.

Then we take a Flashback 50 to Progressive rock icons King Crimson who kick-started progressive rock and created music like “21st Century Schizoid Man” that is as resonant today as in 1969. We go on a Flashback 50 to explore In the Court of the Crimson King and hear commentary from founder, Robert Fripp, Bill Bruford and Banco de Gaia.

Finally, we remember Erik Scott, the wonderful bassist, composer and friend of Echoes who left the planet on October 11 at the all-too-tender age of 71. Hear the music and story of this musician who played with Alice Cooper, Flo & Eddie and Sonia Dada and began recording in 1969 with the psychedelic group Food.

In the Echoes Podcast this week: An interview with Tycho and a Flashback 50 to Pentangle's Basket of Light

First we go inside the music of Tycho with Scott Hansen and singer Saint Sinner. For most of the last two decades there has been a strain of rock music that didn’t really rock out, but instead took a more introspective and almost ambient course, often mixing guitars with electronics.  And they usually don’t have singers. Explosions In The Sky, The Album Leaf and Sigur Ros are among those groups.  But in the last several years Tycho has moved to the front of this group. It's his music that you hear in commercials, movies and NPR buttons.  Scott Hansen started out as an electronic musician but has found himself in a hybrid, ambient rock world.  On his new album, Weather, he creates an ambient dream pop with singer Saint Sinner.

Then we'll explore one of the most beautiful albums ever made, Pentangle's Basket of Light, released in October 1969. In a Flashback 50 we explore one of the seminal albums of new acoustic music, Pentangle’s Basket of Light. Pentangle included guitar legends Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, bass legend Danny Thompson, percussionist Terry Cox and singer Jacqui McShee. Pentangle was a direct influence on Will Ackerman and all the Windham Hill guitarists, Loreena McKennitt, Olivia Chaney, and more. John Diliberto brings us Pentangle’s Basket of Light in a Flashback 50 on Echoes.

 

In the Echoes Podcast, John Diliberto and Jeff Towne cast back through 30 years of incredible music, live performances, great interviews and some 7800 Echoes shows. Taking questions from listeners and musicians John and Jeff talk about the origins of the show, some of our adventures on the road and in the studio and more.

Rob Simonsen is a veteran film composer who's movies include Nerve, Love, Simon and  dozens of others. This year alone he’s scored The Friend, Fast Color and Captive State. Somehow, he found time to make his first solo recording, Reveries. He creates a nostalgic ambient chamber music album, seen through the fog of his Paris residency. We screen Rob Simonsen in the Echoes Podcast..

In the Echoes Podcast, a Flashback 50 to East of Eden's Mercator Projected and we remember Hossam Ramzy.

We begin with a Flashback 50 with the 1969 debut by East of Eden, Mercator Projected. This seminal release was the blueprint that groups like King Crimson used at the dawn of progressive rock.  This brilliant band fused psychedelia, free jazz, Middle Eastern, gypsy music and Bartok into a heady filled with searing electric violin, saxophone blowouts, some of the most profound electric bass you'll ever hear and tripped out tunes sung through a Leslie speaker. John Diliberto brings us this lost classic, East of Eden’s Mercator Projected in a Flashback 50 on Echoes.

Then we remember Hossam Ramzy the Egyptian percussionist who collaborated with Peter Gabriel on Passion as well as Robert Plant &  Jimmy Page and Phil Thornton. We’ll go back to an Echoes feature on him from 2002.

Azam Ali takes her love of electronic music to create her new album, Phantoms. In the Echoes Podcast she talks about a sound born from social and political darkness and electronic grooves.