PRX: Echoes Interview Podcast

This History of Electronic Pop: Orchestral Manouevres in the Dark: The Complete Interview

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark was a band at the leading edge of the electronic pop movement of the 1980s. Just behind acts like The Normal, Gary Numan and Cabaret Voltaire, they brought electronic pop to the top of the English charts. When they began, they thought they were part of a musical revolution. The core of the band is founding members Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphries and after a long hiatus, they’ve come back stronger than ever in recent years, in an era where the revolution has been won. They recently released their 14th studio album, Bauhaus Staircase.

Tangerine Dream Founder Edgar Froese's Complete 1982 Interview in the Echoes Podcast

Tangerine Dream changed music. Period. There was nothing like them before their 1974 album, Phaedra and a vast landscape of music from Donna Summer’s I Feel Love” to EDM to ambient to dreampop are based on their sonic designs. Edgar Froese was the guiding light of Tangerine Dream. He founded the group as an experimental band in the 1960s and guided them through a music that was wed to technology, even if Froese once told me that if you can’t make music on a comb, then you are not a musician. I interviewed Edgar several times before his passing in 2015.

I talked to Froese as part of the radio series Totally Wired-Artists in Electronic Sound in 1982. I met him at his studio in West Berlin. This was before the Berlin Wall came down and there was still a claustrophobic and disconnected sense to the city. Escaping that is part of what Tangerine Dream’s music was about. At the time, White Eagle was their latest recording and Stuntman was Froese’s latest solo release.

Froese had already created an entirely new kind of music with Tangerine Dream on albums like Stratosfear, Rubycon and Ricochet. They epitomized the electronic age of music, recording over 150 albums of synthesized compositions. Their film soundtracks include “Sorcerer” “Thief,” “Risky Business,” and “Legend.” But Tangerine Dream are the original source.

Hear Edgar Froese talk about the history of the group, his ideas about electronic music and his sense of cosmic consciousness in the Echoes Podcast II with his complete 1982 interview

Listen to our Tangerine Dream at 50 Documentary.

Darkside's Psychic Debut: The Echoes Interview

Darkside is the name of a trippy duo that mixes electronics with expansive guitar solos, heavy rhythms and swirling textures. They met in Brown University and began performing together when David Harrington played guitar in Nicolas Jaar’s touring band.  Free improvisations in their hotel room led to their first real collaboration. Their debut album, Psychic, is getting the 10th Anniversary Reissue treatment. They talk about improvising electronics, covering Daft Punk and the inspiration of Can in the Echoes Podcast..

Hammock Out of the Void: The Complete Echoes Interview

Last January I had a great interview with Hammock, the ambient guitar duo.  It was long and wide-ranging but we could only fit so much into a 15-minute piece. Today, however, I bring you the complete interview where Hammock talk about their latest album, Love in the Void. as well as religion, therapy, sobriety, and the return of guitars that sound like guitars to their music. Love in the Void is a post-pandemic release and one of their most energized albums in years, sounding like a band who has emerged from a long dark tunnel. The music they made in that tunnel, including the album Elsewhere was deep and immersive, wrapping you in a cocoon of sound. But Love in the Void carries you on a lighter, also more aggressive plane.

Marc Byrd: Honestly, Love in the Void is a reaction to everyone telling us how much they sleep to our music.  And what did you say, Andrew?

I suspect that it’s an album I’ll be listening to much more, wide awake.  Hammock’s Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson talk about the emotions and events that fueled the album from sobriety to love, loss to anger, and joy. in this extended Echoes Podcast.

Read John Diliberto’s review of Love in the Void

Devo Turns 50. Hear Their Previously Unreleased 1987 Interview

They haven’t recorded anything new in over a decade, and nothing for twenty years before that.  Their most consequential body of work was at the turn of the 1980s where they presaged New Wave music. But Devo remains a singularly unique entity. There is no one like them and their influence has been broad and deep . Their music is laced with irony and social commentary, married to a mechanized music aesthetic and a dadaesque visual aesthetic. Emerging out of Kent State University in Ohio, they found their identity after the massacre there in May of 1970. By the time of their debut single they had already produced several videos and the film, The Truth About De-Evolution.  But it was the single “Mongoloid” b/w “Jocko Homo,” released in 1977, that put them on the music map. I remember picking that up at 3rd Street Jazz & Rock in Philadelphia and playing it on the progressive music show, Diaspar on WXPN Philadelphia.  It definitely sounded different.  Although they emerged out of the punk scene, they were not remotely punk, recalling The Residents more than any other band out there. I saw them at the Hot Club in Philadelphia on their first tour. No one looked like them on stage, with their hazmat suits, playing guitars, drums and an Electrocomp 500 synthesizer, and jerkily moving to their syncopated grooves.  Along with bands like Ultravox and Magazine, they were New Wave before New Wave. Their sound became more electronic over the years, especially for their hit single, “Whip It” in 1980.  That track is something of a lodestone as it locked in the band’s identity with audiences as a novelty act, ignoring that Devo was actually a subversive conceptual art project based in social criticism, and they’ve been recognized as such by critics and journalists. But they’re also really funny.  Why else would Brian Eno produce their debut album Q:Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo.

Besides their nine studio albums, as individuals they’ve done several music videos, as well as film and television soundtracks, including Mark Mothersbaugh’s scores for Rugrats, The Royal Tannenbaums and most famously, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. The band are currently touring the world and have released a retrospective, 50 Years of De-Evolution 1973-2023.

I interviewed the band in 1987. For some reason, it was never used in the Totally Wired radio show I produced at the time, nor did I use it in print, even though in the interview I said it was going to be in Electronic Musician Magazine, which I wrote for in the 1980s and 90s. I talked to Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale in a warehouse-like space in Los Angeles.  Late into the interview Bob Casale, who sadly passed in 2014, entered the conversation. It was pretty noisy and some woman kept making announcements on a PA. It was a long way from Mutato Muzika, their high-end studio in West Hollywood where I talked to Mothersbaugh again in the early 2000s.  They were sort of in-between at this moment. They’d been dropped by Warner Bros and their last album on the label, Shout came out in 1984, and their next one on Enigma, Total Devo, was released in 1988.  It’s a rambling interview and pretty funny.

Opium Moon's Sound of Unity and Sensuality: The Echoes Podcast Interview

Today we journey into world fusion with Opium Moon. This is the Grammy winning ensemble who are part of a new wave of artists fusing sounds from the Middle east. Their music taps the overtly sensual sounds of this region. But Opium Moon’s Lili Hadyn says it’s all about the spirit.

Lili Hayden: Honestly, it’s all about flow. We’re letting the spirit move through us and if it’s coming though in a more sensual way, god bless. And if it comes in more of a sacred way than similarly.

We talk to this ensemble which includes acclaimed Canadian-American violinist violinist Lili Haydn, Iranian-American santurist Hamid Saeidi, American percussionist MB Gordy and Israeli-American bass guitarist Itai Disraeli.  Their new album is Where We Are Gathered. There has, perhaps never been a better time for their music of unity. Hear it tonight on Echoes from PRX.

Opium Moon – Time and Tide – Where We Are Gathered

Mimi Page: Dream Pop, Deep Trauma, and Healing: The Complete Interview in Echoes Podcast

Mimi Page is an auteur of electronic dream pop and a composer of video game scores. You’ve heard her music turn up in TV series like Dark.  We’ve been intoxicated by her for years whether it’s her serene vocals on Breathe Me In, the celestial choirs of Dark Before the Dawn, her collaborations with Delerium or her own evocative instrumentals. But her new album, Sound Healing Volume 1 takes her in a more meditative direction. We thought our interview with her was so engaging we wanted you to hear it all.

Trumpeter Jeff Oster Goes Lo-Fi & Al Petteway Remembered in the Echoes Podcast: The Echoes Interview

Photo Credit: Irene Young

We go lo-fi and ambient jazz when Jeff Oster talks about his new album, hØwling lØØn. Known for his work with Will Ackerman and FLOW, Oster creates a surreal loungescape that’s quite a bit different. He plays more trumpet than he has in years, uses samples and found sound, and finds himself with an audience that’s demographically inverse from the one he usually has. Take a seat at the ambient lounge with Jeff Oster in the Echoes Podcast from PRX.

Jeff Oster – Old Dog New Tricks – hØwling lØØn

Also in this weeks podcast, we remember Al Petteway. The fingerstyle guitarist left the planet on September 25th after a short battle with an aggressive cancer. We’ll hear several tracks from his long career and revisit an interview with Al and his wife and musical partner,  Amy White. They played on Echoes live in 2005 and we talked to them about their folk-based sound. Among their many albums, Winter Tidings, is a perennial part of our Holiday programming.

Steve Roach & Robert Rich's Tangerine Dream Experience: The Echoes Interview

In this Echoes Podcast episode, I’ve got a special interview with two icons of Echoes who recently played with another icon of Echoes.  Tangerine Dream recently toured the US and in several cities, they invited specials guest to perform with them in the improvised encore segment that they call Sessions. In Tucson and San Diego, they picked Steve Roach. In San Francisco, Robert Rich.  Of course, both musicians cite Tangerine Dream as major influence and in Roach’s case they are heroes. But this is not the band they originally heard, but later artists who picked up the mantel and spirit of the group.  Roach and Rich could actually be fathers of the current line-up. So, I had a lot of questions because, even though this isn’t the classic line-up, it is still fucking Tangerine Dream!!!!  And they are making great music right now. It’s a great conversation.

The Ambient Jungle: Lis Addison in Echoes Podcast

Lis Addison is a musician, singer, dancer and electronic artist.  She was schooled in the avant-garde at Mills College with musicians like Terry Riley as teachers. But she fled that for a different sound that embodies chant, meditation, ambient music and often, actual songs.  She has a new album inspired by her visits and environmental work in Kenya. It’s called Songs From The Mara. We go on safari with Lis Addison, in the Echoes Podcast from PRX.

LIS ADDISON FEATURE PLAYLIST