PRX: Echoes Interview Podcast

Rival Consoles Electronic Elliptical Songs: The Echoes Interview in the Echoes Podcast

In the Echoes Podcast, Rival Consoles. Ryan West records as Rival Consoles on the tastemaker Erased Tapes label. It’s a resolutely electronic project, but he still thinks of his chromium plated compositions as songs.  He calls it “songwriting with an electronic palate.” We hear Rival Consoles talk about electronic songs or an abstract sort in the Echoes Podcast. Echoes Jeff Towne produced this feature.

Gracie and Rachel - Into the Shadows: The Echoes Interview

In the Echoes Podcast, the chamber pop duo of Gracie and Rachel. They have returned with a new album of melodically gorgeous songs called Hello Weakness, You Make Me Strong. In the midst of pandemic they talk about influences from classical to hip-hop, including a madrigal cover of Kreayshawn‘s “Gucci Gucci”.  Their music is uplifting and deeply personal but also responding to the world around us. They dress in opposites, black and white, but we get into the shadows with Gracie and Rachel in the Echoes Podcast.  This is the uncensored version.

Two Icons-Andreas Vollenweider and Mike Oldfield in Echoes Podcast

Two icons in the Echoes Podcast with the return of Andreas Vollenweider and Mike Oldfield’s Ommadawn on its 45th Anniversary

In the Echoes Podcast, after 11 years, New Age Icon Andreas Vollenweider returns. He has a new album, Quiet Places.  What has he been doing all this time?  Writing a novel, In the Mirror of Venus.  The inspiration of the album is partly drawn from his tale of the imagination, but it all comes down to music.

Andreas Vollenweider: Since I was a child, I was always interested what’s behind, beyond the, below the surface, below the surface, what’s there.  How deep does it go?  And that was why the music started to sound the way it was.  Music for me was a way to deal with this whole field of questions.

We go below the surface with Andreas Vollenweider talking about his novel, his album and free improvisation on Echoes.  Quiet Places will be the Echoes October CD of the Month.

Mike Oldfield hasn’t been hiding the last 11 years, releasing two albums this past decade, but we look back 45 years to his 3rd album, Ommadawn . He’s holding the cover to Tubular Bells , his 1973 hit debut album, in this picture, but many consider Ommadawn to be Mike Oldfield’s masterpiece. We’ll hear Oldfield talk about Ommadawn, which is partly an an homage to his mother, who died during the recording, and her Irish roots. We travel to Ommadawn on its 45th anniversary with Mike Oldfield on Echoes.    

German Progressive Guitar Icon Goes Dreaming

In the Echoes Podcast, Michael Rother, a legend of progressive rock and electronic music,  In the early 1970s he was in an early version of Kraftwerk, then co-founded the bands Neu and Harmonia and went on to developed a distinctive guitar sound and driving rhythmic approach on a string of solo albums.  He hasn’t put out new music in 16 years, but now has a new box set of his music, Solo II, along with a brand new album, sort of, called Dreaming. You’ll hear what we mean when John Diliberto talks with Michael Rother about Kraftwerk, his new approach to guitar, and his turn toward dream pop.

California Guitar Trio, Hiroki Okano and Silver Apples Remembered in Echoes Podcast

The California Guitar Trio talk about their Echoes CD of the Month, Elegy. CGT has been around for a little over three decades and have recorded 18 albums. They got together in the 80s while studying with King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp in his famed Guitar Craft course and played in his League of Crafty Guitarists. They’ve taken those teachings and deployed them across an eclectic range of music that includes covers of Queen and Pink Floyd as well as John Cage and many original compositions. Their latest album may be their most coherent and finely crafted yet, even though it was recorded in AirBnB living rooms while on tour this past winter just before Pandemic lockdown. Hear the latest chapter of California Guitar Trio’s journey on Echoes.

Read a review of their album Elegy.

And speaking of CD of the Month Picks, back in December of 2017 we selected Hiroki Okano’s album, Return to the Soul. At the time we produced a podcast review of the album. This week, we played all 51-minutes of Hiroki Okano’s new album, Quantum Leap Breeze on Echoes. It was the first time we’d ever don’t something like that. Listening back to that podcast I realized it was more of a profile of Hiroki Okano than an album review so I thought I’d give it another spin today because we’ve been playing this authentic and inventive musician since 1991.    

Silver Apples were the first electronic pop band. They formed in 1967 and released their eponymous debut in 1968.  They had no synthesizers or electronic keyboards, just Danny Taylor on drums and Simeon Coxe on a collection of audio oscillators controlled by telegraph switches, buttons and knobs.  They were right in the center of the psychedelic 60s, opening for many of the major acts at the time and jamming with Jimi Hendrix.  Danny Taylor died in 2005 and now Simeon Coxe has joined him in the electronic web of the universe. He left on September 8.  In the Echoes Podcast, we go back to our 2013 interview with Coxe at the Mountain Oasis Music Festival.

Shpongle's Simon Posford and Mark Dwane in Echoes Podcast

We get Shpongled in the Echoes Podcast when Simon Posford, one-half of the legendary psychedelic electronic band Shpongle, talks about his new solo album Flux and Contemplation, Portrait of an Artist in Isolation.  The pandemic has been tough on many of us. It’s a time when you sort of want to get out of your mind.  Nobody does that better than Simon Posford. With Shpongle, he goes on hallucinogenic journeys but on his new solo album, he reflects on this time of lockdown, and it’s hallucinogenic as well. Simon Posford takes us through the 10 Stages of Lockdown.

One of the legends of indie-space music takes us out of this world when we talk with Mark Dwane. Dwane has been a fixture on Echoes starting with his debut album, The Monuments of Mars.. Since that 1988 recording, he’s released several great albums, including his revisit to his debut, Martian Apparitions, and and his latest, Future Tense. We revisit our interview with Mark Dwane from a decade ago. This purveyor of expansive, cinematic melodies and propulsive grooves talks about his music and aliens in the Echoes Podcast.

Echoes Podcast: Electronic Artist Dave Bessell of Node and Reality Engine

In the Echoes Podcast, Dave Bessell.  Dave Bessell is an electronic musician from England who is probably one of the few Doctors of Music we play on the show. He’s done session work on albums by Killing Joke and Suede, is a member of the occasional electronic group, Node with producer Flood, collaborates with Greek electronic artist, Parallel Worlds, and has several solo albums out. Using Jorge Luis Borges and the Grimm Brothers as inspiration, his music tends to be dark.  His latest album is Reality Engine on the famed DiN Label.

Echoes Podcast: Interviews with Electronic Artists Ben Blackett & Jim Ottaway

From 1990s grunge rock engineer in Seattle to electronic soundscapes composer, Ben Blackett has had a long music career. He plugs in computers instead of guitars and creates dance floor trances and melodic contemplations.  His latest album is Portals. Ben Blackett talks about manipulating virtual synthesizers, choir samples, and his own wife’s voice, on Echoes.

Jim Ottaway lives on the Gold Coast of Australia and his music heads into the oceans of space. He’s an electronic musician who came to it late in life but he’s making up for lost time with over two dozen albums in last decade. Hes just released his latest, When Eternity Touches Time John Diliberto talks to Jim Ottaway about traveling the Australian spaceways on Echoes.

Echoes Podcast: YPPAH's Psychedelic Dance: The Echoes Interview

YPPAH is happy spelled backwards and it’s the name of an ambiently inclined post rock group headed up by Joe Corrales.  He’s gone through heavy metal, drum and bass, hip-hop and Turkish psychedelic music to arrive at a joyful sound in the orbit of artists like Tycho, The Album Leaf and Explosions in the Sky.  Earlier this year they released the album, Sunset in the Deep End which made the Top 5 of the Best of Echoes 2020 , So Far. Get YPPAH with John Diliberto’s interview and sound profile in the Echoes Podcast.

You can Catch YPPAH’s exhilarating live Echoes performance streaming right here.

The Metamorphosis of Llynks in Echoes Podcast

In the Echoes Podcast, an interview with Llynks. She graduated from the Berklee School of Music, tried working as a model, started a music career with her birth name, Sara Kendall, then metamorphosed into Llynks, a dark, soul-revealing electronic pop project. She’s just released her debut album, Become the Root. Kendall talks about modeling, depression, uncertainty and crafting an electronic sound of cyberpunk sonority.