PRX: Echoes Interview Podcast

Echoes Podcast: The Ministry of Quiet Resonance and Ashley Capps Opens Our Big Ears

It’s Quiet Resonance on the next Echoes when we talk to Tony Pounders. As Quiet Resonance, he composes guitar orchestrations that range from ambient to pastoral to pure space. He also has another side to his life that might surprise you. He’s from Mississippi, a place with a deep musical heritage but not a fountain of ambient, electronic or new age music. If you love Jeff Pearce, Suss and Lanterna you may want to hear Quiet Resonance.  He made our year end Best of Echoes Top 30 in 2024. He’s just released a new album, Endless Beginnings. John Diliberto goes to church to talk to Quiet Resonance in the Echoes Podcast.

Quiet Resonance – Frostbite – Snow Blind

It’s Big Ears on the next Echoes. We’ll talk to founder Ashley Capps about the Big Ears Festival 2024, which includes performances from Laurie Anderson, King Britt, Andre 3000, Laraaji, Roger Eno and about 200 more. This is a mammoth festival in Knoxville that ranges from singer-songwriters to avant-garde string quartets to electronic artists to free jazz and multiple intersections of all those things. And you can’t see all of the 200 or so acts so leave FOMO behind.

Ashley Capps: That to me, John, is the secret of the festival. And it’s kind of an interesting metaphor for our world of distraction that we live in every day, where so many things are pulling you in so many different directions. But ultimately, satisfaction emerges from being in the moment and completely engaged in whatever situation you happen to find yourself in.

If you’ve got big ears, join us in the Echoes Podcast.

Read John Diliberto’s Path Through Big Ears Festival 2024

Kronos Quartet – The Cusp of Magic – Terry Riley: The Cusp of Magic

Big Ears Festival Founder Ashley Capps Exploding Music Show!

Today in the Echoes Podcast we explore Big Ears Festival 2024. This is the annual new music extravaganza in Knoxville, Tennessee of bleeding edge sounds, free jazz, deep ambient and very much more since 2009. This years festival features Andre 3000, Herbie Hancock, Laraaji, Laurie Anderson, King Britt and about 200 other performers across four days from March 21-24. I’ve been talking to founder Ashley Capps annually about the festival since 2015. We’ll go a little deeper not just about who is playing the festival, but why.

Ashley Capps may be one of the most innovative concert promoters of the last 20 years. He founded the Bonaroo Festival in 2002 and produced the two best Moogfests as well as the Mountain Oasis Music Festival. But Big Ears is his passion project, so much so that he gave up those other gigs to form a non-profit to produce it. Big ears is one of the most ear challenging, as well as one of the most civilized, taking place in downtown Knoxville in multiple, enclosed venues from large concert halls to small clubs and a few odd locations as well, like a cathedral. Every year, Ashley and I sit across from each other on screen and survey the Big Ears landscape. Hear it now in the Echoes Podcast

The 50th anniversary of Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra and The Tangerine Dream Documentary

In the Echoes Podcast, head into psychedelic space on the 50th anniversary of Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra. This is a seminal album of electronic music that essentially launched the whole sequencer school of electronics. We’ll hear a meditation on Phaedra with Moby, Mark Shreeve, Ian Boddy, Steve Roach, and Ulrich Schnauss as well as most of the Phaedra album. 

Then as a bonus, we’re putting up our documentary on Tangerine Dream which includes interviews with all the members the classic line-up, Edgar Froese, Peter Baumann and Christoph Franke. We also hear from later members Thorsten Quaeschning and Ulrich Schnauss as well as Moby, Mark Shreeve, Ian Boddy, Steve Roach and Jah Wobble,

Read John Diliberto’s Meditation on Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra.

21st Century Mediaeval Hymns; Kevin Keller-The Echoes Podcast

In the Echoes Podcast, we go to the monastery when Kevin Keller talks about his album, Evensong. It’s partly based on the chants and hymns of 12th century Abbess Hildegard von Bingen.

You might recall the chant craze of the 1990s when The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo singing gothic hymns were topping the charts, and artists like Enigma were adapting chants into their music. But rising above them all were the 12th century compositions of Abbess Hildegard von Bingen. Her music was recreated by artists like Gothic Voices, Sequentia and Anonymous 4 and adapted for 20th century ears by Richard Souther, Vox, and David Lynch with Jocelyn Montgomery. Now composer Kevin Keller has created his own beautiful renderings of her music on the album Evensong, a CD of the Month in November.

Today we might call Hildegard a polymath. She was a writer, philosopher, mystic, and medical practitioner. But she is best known for her music: heavenly plainchant hymns that call to the heavens in the most sensual way. Many of these came to her in visions, and that’s how Kevin Keller’s album, Evensong arrived.

Kevin Keller: At the risk of sounding a little too mystical, this album did sort of come to me in a vision. It arrived fully formed in my brain two years ago in October of 21. And just in like the space of a couple of hours, I had the album title, the concept, and I knew right from the beginning that it was going to involve songs by Hildegard of Bingen and that there would be eight songs.

We talk to Kevin Keller about bringing these gothic sounds into the 21st century.

Hear it tonight or Right Now at Echoes On-Line.

Sequentia – O Virdissima Virga, Ave – Canticles of Ecstasy

Riding the Storm with Russel Walder: The Echoes Podcast

Our CD Of The Month in November was Speak to the Storm by Russel Walder.  It was so compelling we had to talk to the oboe player who we first knew as one half of the duo Ira Stein and Russel Walder on Windham Hill Records.  The music he makes on his own in his adopted home of New Zealand, is quite a bit darker than anything he recorded with the duo. When he says speak to the storm, he means it.

Russel Walder: I absolutely believe that the internal conscious state of existence is a storm that never ends, ever.

Russel Walder. We’ll be talking to him and weathering the storm in the Echoes Podcast.

Read John Diliberto’s review of Speak to the Storm .

RUSSEL WALDER FEATURE PLAYLIST

Ira Stein & Russel Walder _ The Underground – A Door in the Air

Tim Story, Michael Rother, Roedelius and Neu!: The Echoes Interviews

Tim Story and Hans-Joachim Roedelius

Tim Story used to be the ultimate melodicist with albums like The Perfect Flaw and Beguiled. But now he’s mutating sounds, often with German icon, Roedelius.

Tim Story is something of a legend in electronic and new age circles. He’s been recording since 1981 and was a pioneer in ambient chamber music with albums like Shadowplay.  But he also has an edgier side that has come out in his work with the avant-garde German electronic duo Cluster and especially the elder member of that group. Hans-Joachim Roedelius. He’s pretty much abandoned his signature sound.

Tim Story: I have a lot of people that say boy, I love Beguiled or I love Shadow Play, it’s one of my favorite records — and you know, are you gonna make another record like that?  And I feel bad in a way, but, but I can’t in some ways because I mean I could and I might actually still.

I talk to Tim Story and Roedelius about Tim’s shift from a melody maven to a dissonant dreamer in the Echoes Podcast from PRX.

NEU! from Left Klaus Dinger, Michael Rother

Echoes looks at Neu!, the 1970s German duo that is still influencing bands like Stereolab and more today. The duo celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2022 and their album, Neu! 2 turned 50 last year.

In the early 1970s, a host of LSD-washed malcontents from Germany created a hypnotic brand of electronic music, with roots in Karlheinz Stockhausen as much as The Velvet Underground.  Kraftwerk, Faust, Cluster and Can were among the first wave, as was Neu!, Guitarist Michael Rother, electronic twiddler and drummer Klaus Dinger, and phantom third member, producer, Conny Plank, constructed a sound of relentless rhythms and metronomic drums that are still influencing music. We’ll hear guitarist Michael Rother talking about their gestation as part of Kraftwerk and we’ll hear music from Neu! 2. It’s all new with Neu! in the Echoes Podcast from PRX.

Opposites Meet with Lou Reed, Iasos and Steven Halpern in the Echoes Podcast

Before he died in 2013, Lou Reed created an ambient album called Hudson River Wind Meditations that tapped into his spiritual side. Now that the album is being re-released in a deluxe edition, we go back to our interview with Reed talking about it. Lou Reed was an iconic figure in modern music.  The founder of The Velvet Underground, he provided a counterpart to the hippies and flower power of the era, trawling a darker and seedier side of life.  As a solo artist, he did the same thing, with a lean, distorted guitar sound and songs that were often grittier than a back alley.  But there was  another side to Lou Reed as well, one that’s experimental and meditative.  One example came out on the 2007 CD, Hudson River Wind Meditations. It was an all-electronic disc of drones and ambiences. We don’t play Lou Reed often on Echoes for obvious reasons, but I thought: when else would I have an opportunity to interview him?  Lou Reed talks about a meditative river, in the Echoes Podcast from PRX.

We lost a pioneer of New Age music. He wasn’t as well-known as Yanni, Enya or even Steven Halpern. He didn’t record on signature labels like Windham Hill or Narada records. But Iasos was there at the very dawn of new age music in 1975 when he released his debut album, Interdimensional Music. Iasos mixed mysticism and music, crafting often expansive landscapes that we thought of as space music at the time, before New age took over as the marketing term.

Inter-Dimensional Music and Steven Halpern’s Spectrum Suite, released the same year, were the first trips into the modern new age movement. Iasos was born in Greece but grew up in America. He taught himself flute and piano and by the time he moved to the San Francsico Bay area, he was hearing a sound that wasn’t really out there yet. He combined his acoustic instruments, including lap-steel guitar.  with tape manipulations and synthesizers to create albums like Elixir, Jeweled Space and Realms of Light. These were subtle works that were often more avant-garde than new new age, but all had a mood. Iasos lived deep in the mystic, claiming his music came from other dimensions and citing works like Francis Bacon’s 16th century book, New Atlantis, as well as The Urantia Book. Iasos died on January 6. He was 77 years old. We remember him tonight on Echoes.

I interviewed both Iasos and Steven Halpern in 1983 in their respective homes in the San Francisco Bay Area. I put those together in episode 16 of the radio series Totally Wired-Artists in Electronic Sound

Read John Diliberto’s Tribute to Iasos

The Sound of Winter: David Arkenstone-The Echoes Podcast

David Arkenstone talks about his album, Winterlude.  In the glut of seasonal albums that come out, few rise above the pack. This year, the one star shining in a sea of gilded snow is David Arkenstone’s Winterlude. The 5-time Grammy nominee has created a post-classical chamber work that perfectly evokes the season. And he did it without two elements you’ll hear on every seasonal recording. There are no carols and.no sleighbells. Join John Diliberto when David Arkenstone talks about his CD of the Month, Winterlude on the Echoes Podcast from PRX.

Read John Diliberto’s review of Winterlude

PLAYLIST FOR DAVID ARKENSTONE INTERVIEW

David Arkenstone – The Icy Brook Finds Its Way – Winterlude

The Ambient Firm of Lane, Gregorius and Smith: The Echoes Podcast

Brannan Lane, John Gregorius and Sean O’Bryan Smith come from different musical worlds that range from deep country and western to deep ambience. They are something of a new age supergroup with 3 musicians, all of who have long and in the case of one, varied careers. They are electronic artist Brannan Lane, guitarist John Gregorius and bassist Sean O’Bryan Smith. They can claim country, rock, pop, jazz, ambient, electronic and new age music in their backgrounds and when they came together that had no real conception of their sound. But they created a coherent pastoral ambient mood.

Brannan Lane, John Gregorius, Sean O’Bryan Smith Interview Playlist

Brannan Lane, John Gregorius, Sean O’Bryan Smith – Emergence- Emergence

Hans Christian Communes with the Music and Spirit of Cellist David Darling: The Echoes Podcast

David Darling was one of the premier new music cellists.  He first came to renown performing with the Paul Winter Consort, including work on their classic album, Icarus. He went on to a solo career that has included several recordings on the ECM label, playing both solo cello and in often edgy collaborations with musicians like guitarists Terje Rypdal and Ralph Towner.  On a trio of albums that began with the 1993 CD 8-String Religion, Darling articulated an ambient chamber music that has influenced many.  We lost David Darling in January of 2021, but cellist Hans Christian has resurrected him from the ether with the Grammy-nominated album, Ocean Dreaming Ocean.  We talk to Hans Christian and longtime Darling friend and producer, Mickey Houlihan, about taking multi-track rough session tapes from Darling and turning them into ambient chamber music expanses, in the Echoes Podcast.

Playlist for Hans Christian Feature

Hans Christian – Heart to Heart – Hidden Treasures