PRX: Echoes Interview Podcast

Ambience Ancient and New: Bob Boilen's Pandemic Moods & Malcolm Cecil of Tonto's Expanding Head Band Remembered

In the Echoes Podcast, NPR’s Bob Boilen.  He’s more than the creator of Tiny Desk Concerts and host of All Songs Considered. He’s has been exposing new music and helping keep NPR musically hip for three decades. But that’s not why we talked to him. Bob Boilen is also a composer of music from ambient to punk rock. We get to the ambient side when he talks about his pandemic album Hidden Smiles as well as his covers albums which turn classic rock into ambience without him essentially playing a note.

Then we remember Malcolm Cecil, one half of the duo that made up, Tonto’s Expanding Head Band.  The patch cords were pulled from Cecil on March 28, 2021. He was 84 years old. His band with Robert Margouleff, Tonto’s Expanding Head Band, who released their debut album, Zero Time, 50 years ago. The album was recorded on their electronic array called TONTO, an acronym for The Original New Timbral Orchestra. In ten beautiful curved wooden cases they mounted synthesizers from Moog, ARP, Oberheim Serge and more.  Their first album created a sound that predated by years the music of Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra, Klaus Schulze’s Picture Music and Kraftwerk’s Autobahn. It was an album of thudding bass grooves, melodic electronic flights and deep ambient expanses, long before that became part of the electronic music vernacular. We’ll go back to a 1996 interview with Cecil and Margouleff, recorded in the presence of TONTO

Loreena McKennitt, 14th Icon of Echoes & Leandrul's Psychosis of Dreams in Echoes Podcast

Loreena McKennitt arises as the 14th Icon of Echoes.  She has been one of the defining artists on Echoes for most of our 31 years. She came up during the Celtic craze of the early 90s but transcended that with albums like The Book of Secrets, The Mask and Mirror and An Ancient Muse, creating a lush, often driving world fusion sound that drew upon eastern motifs. And then there were her songs themselves, sung by that voice. Journey on the caravanserai of Loreena McKennitt.

Podcast listeners also find out about the true healing power of music when we hear the story of Leandrul.  Leandrul creates beautiful electro-pop music with deep psychological implications. Her new album, Psychosis of Dreams, is not a metaphor. It’s about her real trauma with mental health and her process of moving through it to recovery. Leandrul goes on the therapist’s couch of Echoes.

The Cosmic Operatic Chants of Shunia

It’s the sound of the spirit when we talk with Shunia, the duo of Lisa Reagan and Suzanne Jackson. The two operatic singers go the atmospheric Kirtan route, turning Hindi chants into serene dream pop on an their eponymous album produced by Jamshied Sharifi. We talk about being Miss Oklahoma, yoga, and dialing down operatic chops to tune in the spirit.

Pat Metheny-The 13th Icon of Echoes and A Winged Victory for the Sullen's Somber Psychedelia

The 13th Icon of Echoes is guitarist Pat Metheny who has influenced generations of musicians with his wide ranging sound. He’s not only one of the most brilliant guitarists, but is a music explorer of the bravest kind. In a special show we’ll sample Metheny’s music from across his career and hear a new interview with him about his latest album, Road to the Sun.    See a complete list of the 30 Icons for 30 Years of Echoes. 

Hear Pat Metheny in an exclusive Echoes live performance from 2011. It’s streaming now.

The ambient chamber music of A Winged Victory for the Sullen. This collaboration between film and TV composer Dustin O’Halloran (Transparent, Ammonite) and Adam Wiltzie from Stars of the Lid, explores darker terrain on the latest album, Invisible Cities, a theater work score based on a surreal take on historical fiction and fantasy by Italo Calvino. We also talk pandemic woes. We take flight with A Winged Victory for the Sullen on Echoes.

In the Echoes Podcast, two musicians who may have been separated at birth, Wax Tailor and Moby.  First up it’s the vocal cut-ups and trip-hop beats of Wax Tailor. The French composer’s new album, The Shadow of Their Suns slices and dices social injustice in the 21st century.  Wax Tailor is Jean-Christophe Le Saoût, and The Shadow of their Suns is his most political album to date, while still being fueled by great beats and riotous vocal cut-ups. The video for “Misery“, which we posted last year gives you an idea of where Wax Tailor’s mind is at.

Then it’s the 12th Icon of Echoes, Moby. For the last 35 years, this electronic artist has been influencing music from techno to downtempo songs and something beyond. His 1999 album, Play, was the last iconic recording of the 20th century and he continues into the 21st century. He’s had three Echoes CD of the Month picks, Wait for Me, Destroyed, Innocents and Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt.  We look back across his music and profile this fascinating, sometimes controversial artist.

Henrik Lindstrand, keyboardist for the Danish Alt-rock band, Kashmir, takes the neo-classical, solo piano route on a trilogy of recordings, Leken, Nattresan and Nordhem. These are a long way from his albums with Kashmir which showed influences of Radiohead, Emo and pop-punk.  These are introspective works which still have some strange sounds although everything comes from the grand piano.  We go inside the creaky piano sound of Henrik Lindstrand in the Echoes Podcast.

We ring the Tubular Bells of the 11th Icon of Echoes, Mike Oldfield. Oldfield made one of the signpost works of the 1970s, but he’s done so much more, right into the middle of the last decade with Return to Ommadawn. We’ll hear Oldfield tell the story behind Tubular Bells.

See our list of 10 Essential Mike Oldfield albums.

Enya-The 10th Icon and Desensitized Interview in Echoes Podcast

It’s the 10th Icon of Echoes: Enya. The Irish singer created a unique and serene sound with her heavily layered vocals, sung in Gaelic, Elven, Latin and Loxian. Her sound has influenced everything from New Age to Dream Pop. We look back across her career and music on Echoes.

Then we get Desensitized. That’s the name chosen for the collaboration between melodic electronic artist Deborah Martin and experimental electronic artist Dean De Benedictus, who also records as Surface 10. They made up their own language for titles, like the name of the album, Hemispherica Portalis (Portal of 1000 Years)  and created their own ecosystem of ambient space sounds. We’ll will sensitize you to Desensitized in the Echoes Podcast.

Echoes Podcast: Suss's Ambient Country Space and Robert Rich, the 9th Icon of Echoes

In the Echoes Podcast we suss it out with SUSS, the tripped-out band that merges country, ambient, and psychedelic music. They discuss whether they are ambient Americana or psychedelic country. It’s an important distinction that we bend our minds over.  Their latest album is Promise. We also delve into Numün, a spaced out side project from one member and their debut, Voyage au Soleil.      SUSS also played live on Echoes, shortly after the release of their album Highlines. 

Then, it’s the 9th Icon of Echoes: Robert Rich. Robert Rich is an electronic pioneer of dreamy, sometimes dark, and always evolving electronic dreamscapes. It’s hard to imagine Echoes over the last 3 decades without Robert Rich. He was on the first Echoes Living Room Concert CD, A Door In the Air and has played live on the show many times.  We’ll survey his career from sleep concerts to glurp and beyond in the Echoes Podcast.

See Ten Essential Albums by Robert Rich

See the complete list of 30 Icons for 30 Years of Echoes.

Steve Reich-8th Icon of Echoes and Digitonal's Ambient Chamber Fantasies in Echoes Podcast

There are two musicians who are always cited in virtually every interview on Echoes. one of them is Brian Eno, the number one Icon of Echoes. The other one is Steve Reich.  And Brian Eno is influenced by him. The 8th Icon of Echoes is Steve Reich. The minimalist composer’s Music for 18 Musicians is the holy grail for many neo-classical, ambient chamber and electronic musicians. We look across Reich’s career in a profile in Echoes Podcast.

See the complete list of 30 Icons for 30 Years of Echoes.

Read Steve Reich Push-Started My VW Bug.

We talk to Ambient chamber artists Digitonal. The British duo’s recent album, Set the Weather Fair, was a CD of the Month and in the Top five of the Best Albums of 2020. Andy Dobson and Dom Graveson talk about their merging of classical moods and electronic ambiences and grooves. And one of them can’t run a dishwasher or washing machine.

Read John Diliberto’s review of Set the Weather Fair

Marya Stark and Klaus Schulze: Music from Other Worlds in Echoes Podcast

Marya Stark is a singer-songwriter with a more celestial approach to lyrics. Last year she released the album, Sapphire, produced with Joshua Penman of Akara. You can hear influences from Loreena McKennitt to Sheila Chandra in her work which includes “Womb Healing” and her “mystical dark pop.”

The 7th of 30 Icons of Echoes, German electronic pioneer, Klaus Schulze. He is so deep in the DNA of Echoes that you could never untangle it. We’ll hear interviews with Schulze talking about his career from Tangerine Dream to Timewind and beyond, from psychedelics to cocaine and beyond. Get ready to experience awe. Read John Diliberto’s appreciation of Klaus Schulze and 5 Essential albums here.  See the complete list of the 30 Icons of Echoes.