PRX: Echoes Interview Podcast

From Technology to Timelessness - Agnes Obel: The Echoes Podcast

Agnes Obel sings songs that seem to have emerged from the forgotten chambers of an ancient church. The voices are mysterious, the words not always intelligible, and the weight of years seems to rise like smoke from a thurible. That’s the sound of Obel’s first album in six years, The Meaning of Flowers which might make it sound foreboding, but it’s beautifully composed music, with melodies that linger in your memory long after the music fades away.

Obel’s previous album, Myopia, was released in 2020. So it’s hardly surprising that the pandemic became part of the story behind this recording. While in lockdown in Berlin, she began making an album about technology, but along the way, something happened.

Agnes Obel: And then I discovered I was pregnant in, I think it was June 2020. And I immediately felt like I had to sort of document just what was happening in my mind. Musically, that’s the best way I know how to sort of journal things in a way.

We talk to Agnes Obel in the Echoes Podcast.

Read our review of Agnes Obel’s The Meaning of Flowers

Windham Hill Founder Will Ackerman's Songs of Reflection: The Echoes Interview

In the beginning, there was Will Ackerman. The guitarist and founder of Windham Hill Records launched a movement in 1976. He created a new wave in music that brought new acoustic instrumental music into the mainstream. It was 50 years ago that he founded Windham Hill Records with his debut album, In search of the Turtle’s Navel. We profiled Will and Windham Hill earlier this year. Today, I talk to will about his new album, Home, and a state of mind where the end is much closer than the beginning.

Will Ackerman: I feel the clock ticking, you know. I mean I’m not gonna be here forever. and it’s not as if I need to pour something out, but if I’m utterly connected to it, if I feel that I’m really expressing whatever is in my heart, then I’m doing what I’m supposed to do.

John Diliberto talks to Will Ackerman and Tom Eaton about this Autumnal recording in the Echoes Podcast from PRX.

Hear our 50th Anniversary Feature on Windham Hill Records & Will Ackerman  

Mark Isham goes Crazy on the Carousel; The Echoes Podcast

Trumpeter Mark Isham returns with his first solo album in 27 years. Isham is a musician who has stretched musical boundaries for four decades, with Group 87, his early electronic album, Vapor Drawings and numerous film and TV scores, including A River Runs Through It, Blade, Crash, Cool World and most recently, The Westies. He has a new album that takes us on a roundabout journey called At the Carousel Club.

Mark Isham: “This is not an ambient record, this is not an electronic music record, this is a storytelling record.”

It’s a wild ride where he has thrown every aspect of his career into his most kinetically-charged album ever. It’s called At the Carousel Club. We talk to Mark Isham in the Echoes Podcast. This is an extended version from the broadcast release.

Pete Roth and Bill Bruford - Fusion Ignited: The Echoes Podcast.

Bill Bruford is one of the greatest drummers of our age and certainly the greatest in Progressive Rock playing with Yes, King Crimson, UK and Earthworks. He retired 13 years ago and got doctorate in music. He claims to have not even touched the drums in that time. But live performance pulled him back in the form of a younger musician, guitarist Pete Roth. They meet in a new space.

Pete Roth: I have to admit up until I met Bill, I didn’t know what Bill was doing and then I learned very quickly that I was being treated to a very prestigious teacher.

Bill Bruford: We have different touchstones, different reference points. It’s not much good, me talking to Pete about King Crimson. or Yes or anything like that. He doesn’t know what that music is. So I like that.

He’s a giant of progressive rock, but he’s only a sideman (wink-wink) with Pete Roth. We’ll be talking to them about their cross-generational approach to music on their album, Group Chat, and why Bruford came out of retirement after 13 years today on Echoes.

Hear our 2018 Interview with Bill Bruford

Wires & Wind - Peter Phippen & Eric "the" Taylor: The Echoes Podcast

Our CD of the Month in September was Two by Twilight from Peter Phippen and Eric “The” the Taylor. Today, I’ve got both musicians talking about what went into making an album that brought two veteran musicians together for the first time. Phippen is a highly regarded world flutist who started out in the Native flute scene. Taylor has been working in the ambient world with David Helpling, Fragile Fate and Dark Sky Alliance. They merged in a meeting of architecture and improvisation.

Peter Phippen: Yeah, I don’t like to think when I’m playing. It’s the old Taoist philosophy. No thinking, no mind, no mind, no problem. So I don’t like to repeat myself.

Peter Phippen and Eric “the” Taylor want to take you into a contemplative state on Two by Twilight. But this isn’t the kind of music found on countless cookie-cutter “Music for Meditation” albums. That’s not their intent at all. Two by Twilight takes you into a land of imagination. They travel in a landscape of organic moss and digital vines, creating a world transformed and surreal. John Diliberto talks to them on Echoes from PRX.

Read John Diliberto’s review of Two by Twilight

Echoes Podcast: Genesis & Marillion Guitarists Fly Together - Steve Hackett & Steve Rothery: The Echoes Interview

In the Echoes Podcast a meeting of two guitar virtuosos of sonic manipulation and melody. There have been a lot of electric guitar duets over the years, John McLaughlin recorded duet albums at different times with Larry Coryell and Carlos Santana; John Scofield and Pat Metheny got together and Jeff Beck and Johnny Depp. Okay, I’m stretching on that last one. But none were as musical and expansive as The Roaring Waves by Steve Hackett and Steve Rothery. You know them from Genesis and Marillion respectively. It’s an instrumental album, but has all the progressive rock drama you’d expect from that lineage without the bombast, and interwoven guitar playing to go with it.

Steve Hackett: Yeah, we avoided the shred particle, as it were. The idea was not to compete but to have a kind of musical conversation and there’s this kind of question and answer approach, the kind of antiphonal thing. You play something, I play something, I answer to your call

We talk to Steve Hackett and Steve Rothery about their album, The Roaring Waves in the Echoes Podcast from PRX.

https://insideoutmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-roaring-waves-24-bit-hd-audio

The Guitar Magic and Mayhem of Jeff Beck with biographers Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill: The Echoes Podcast

In the Echoes Podcast, the beauty and chaos of Jeff Beck, an iconoclastic guitarist, when we talk to biographers Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill.

When John Diliberto was growing up, there were three musicians that formed a holy trinity of guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck. Beck was the first to push the electric guitar into psychedelia with The Yardbirds before taking the instrument into the stratosphere. Beck plucked his final string on January 10, 2023, leaving behind one of the most adventurous and chaotic careers in rock. Now, Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill have published Blow by Blow: The Jeff Beck Story.

Chris Gill: He’s really probably one of the most pure form of an artist that I’ve encountered in my career. He was really relentless in his pursuit of of a sound, of not just a sound, but sounds of what he heard of music.

We connected with them to explore our common love of Beck, and they took us on a journey through his many incarnations—from psychedelic blues rocker to fusion adaptor to fearless electronica experimenter. Along the way, there was an unexpected stop at Vangelis. Chris Gill and Brad Tolinski have been around the rock music block for decades. Tolinksi was Chief Editor of Guitar World Magazine for a quarter century. He’s written books on Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, The MC5 and a history of the electric guitar. Along with Gill, he co-wrote Eruption: Conversations with Eddie Van Halen. Gill is a Guitar World writer and a contributor to books on Eric Clapton and a previous Jeff Beck book. They have both interviewed Jeff Beck many times and seen him live even more.

Read John Diliberto’s review of Jeff Beck Live from 2010

Spotted Peccary Music celebrates its 40th Anniversary

In the Echoes Podcast, it’s all about Spotted Peccary Music as the pioneering ambient and electronic label celebrates its 40th anniversary. They have outlasted Windham Hill, Narada, Hearts of Space Records and many more. Artists like David Helpling, Deborah Martin, Chronotope Project, Craig Padilla and Rudy Adrian have been part of a catalog of more than 200 releases, all shaped by the creative vision of Howard Givens and Deborah Martin, the brain trust of the label

Howard Givens: “The goal was to design a sound that left you immersed in the music, not distracted by the fact that it came from a synthesizer.”

They’re celebrating 40 years since they came together in Tucson Arizona. They actually released their first album in 1989, In the Land of Power by Brain Laughter. The Spotted Peccary is an imaginary creature born in the desert southwest. But it’s the name of a consequential label, Spotted Peccary Music. We’ll be talking with them about their genesis and evolution across 40 Years.

April 2026: Craig Padilla & Marvin Allen – Unfolding Skies

A Meeting in Ambience: Michael Stearns & Robert Rich: The Echoes Podcast

In the Echoes Podcast, two electronic musicians who were part of the original 1980s California new age and space music scenes. Michael Stearns and Robert Rich are icons of electronic music and have recorded their first album ever together, Reunion of Breath and Waves. And they did it in person face to face, synth to synth.

Robert Rich: I’ve been using a term for twenty-five plus years now that I refer to as embodiment, which, having lived my life in Silicon Valley until recently, getting extremely tired of the push towards virtualization going on in technology and feeling that to push back, one needs to find a language of physicality, of non-virtual non-virtuality. I think many of the problems that we’re entering into in our civilization has to do with  a denunciation of physicality, a denunciation of our animal nature.

We hear some deep musical explorations when John Diliberto talks with Michael Stearns and Robert Rich. Michaels Stearns recordings like Planetary Unfolding, Chronos, Encounter and Samsara are albums that influenced a generation. Robert Rich has a charted a singular course through electronic music traverses abstract realms, world fusion and electronic dreams from his breakthrough release, Rainforest through his seven-hour album inspired by his sleep concerts, Somnium to his recent CD of the Month, Travelers’ Cloth. Even though they travel in the same music circles and have known each other for 40 years, they’ve never recorded together until now and the results are a spectacular album, Reunion of Breath and Waves.

Thoughts Through Sound - David Helpling & Scott Reich: The Echoes Podcast

On the Echoes Podcast, David Helpling and Scott Reich go Through the Thought Horizon. They are musicians exploring a philosophical ambience. David Helpling you might know from his many solo works, collaborations with Jon Jenkins and Dark Sky Alliance. Scott Reich is less well-known. He’s a pianist and electronic composer, but he also takes his music to the mystical side on their collaboration, Through the Thought Horizon.

Scott Reich: The word “through,” meaning if you get to tied to your thoughts, you can have a limited experience in life. But if you can go through the thought horizon, then you’re opening up all kinds of new experiences. You can exist beyond thought.

Get ready for a ride into philosophy, the Kabbalah and the Primordial Tower. Join John Diliberto with David Helping and Scott Reich on the Echoes Podcast from PRX.