PRX: Echoes Interview Podcast

Sean Ono Lennon: The Complete Echoes Interview

A couple of weeks ago, I brought you our produced interview with Sean Ono Lennon. But that interview was so good and so wide-ranging, I thought you might like to hear the entire interview. Lennon is, of course, the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono and we talked about that, especially their use of astrology. And we talk a lot about music because Lennon is something of an omnivore when it comes to different genres. And of course, we talk a lot about his own music, which has a decided bend toward psychedelia.  That’s something that comes out on his new album, Asterisms, inspired by The Inner Mounting Flame record from The Mahavishnu Orchestra, and other things.

Sean Lennon: I remember taking mushrooms and listening to Inner Mounting Flame actually. So it was actually me and a bunch of friends and .. .It blew our minds so much we jammed for hours afterwards and had a really good time.

We talk a lot more about altered states of mind with to Sean Ono Lennon in the Echoes Podcast.

A Conversation with Jeff Oster, Vin Downes & Tom Eaton About Seven Conversations: The Echoes Podcast

In the Echoes Podcast, one conversation with three artists who have put out an album called Seven Conversations. They are trumpeter Jeff Oster, guitarist Vin Downes and 6 multi-instrumentalist Tom Eaton. These are three musicians you’ve heard a lot on Echoes with their solo albums as well as collaborative works in FLOW, the trio of Jeff Oster, Tom Eaton and Will Ackerman trio and numerous Will Ackerman productions. But as this trio, they’ve created an album of true ambient improvisation; Three musicians in intuitive communion.

Tom Eaton: I think this project is something we could only make with the three of us sitting together in a room. I couldn’t even imagine doing this, like, as overdubs. Like one of us starting something and sending it off to the other guy or whatever. It just, it wouldn’t make any sense. So I think it has to happen with the three of us together.

This is what great music sounds like when musicians actually perform together in one room. We talk to them in three different rooms across three thousand miles or so in the Echoes Podcast.

Read John Diliberto’s review of Seven Conversations, Echoes May CD of the Month

Oster-Downes-Eaton – Hushed – Seven Conversations

The Transcendence of Trio Mediaeval: The Echoes Podcast

Trio Mediaeval at Bg Ears Festival with John Diliberto Photo: Jeff Towne

In the Echoes Podcast, the celestial sounds of Trio Mediaeval. This extraordinary group of singers channel sounds from the Middle ages up through contemporary composers. We talk to them about their quarter-century journey into the past.  They are Linn Andrea Fuglseth, Anna Maria Friman and Jorunn Lovise Husan. Their latest album is An Old Hall Ladymass.  Although they sing mostly in Latin, it’s not the words that will seduce you.

Linn Andrea Fuglseth: I just love the sound of the language, I must say. It’s also very poetic, the use of the words, like, the different descriptions of the Virgin Mary for instance. Like the Queen of the Seas and the Star of the Skies.It’s just really beautiful.

This ensemble of Norwegian singers are making a music that can bring you to tears. Just listen to Roger Eno when he reacts to the trio after seeing them live at Big Ears Festival for the first time. You’ll hear that as well as what these three women listened to growing up in Norway. It wasn’t polyphony and plainsong. It’s Trio Mediaeval in the Echoes Podcast from PRX.

Artist – Title – Album

The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos – Puer Natus Est Nobis: Introit- Chant

Enigma – Principles of Lust/Sadeness – MCMXC a.D.

Richard Souther – For the Trinity – Vision

Trio Mediaeval – Alma Mater – Words of the Angel

Trio Mediaeval – Words of the Angel- Words of the Angel

ABBA  – Take a Chance on Me – The Album

Trio Mediaeval – O Maria, Stella Maris – Stella Maris

Trio Mediaeval – Sanctus – An Old Hall Ladymass

Trio Mediaeval – St.Birgitta Hymn: Rosa Rorans Bonitatem – Rimur 

Julia Wolfe/Trio Mediaeval – Destiny – Steel Hammer

Trio Mediaeval – Sol Lucet – An Old Hall Ladymass

Trio Mediaeval – Gloria – An Old Hall Ladymass

Trio Mediaeval – Kyrie – An Old Hall Ladymass

Sean Ono Lennon's Inner Mounting Psychedelia: The Echoes Podcast

In this weeks Echoes Podcast we’re I’m thrilled to bring you an interview with Sean Ono Lennon. Yes, he’s the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono but if your knowledge of him ends there you are in for a pleasant surprise. He’s been creating his own music over the years with a decided bend toward psychedelia and it’s something that comes out on his new album, Asterisms, inspired by The Inner Mounting Flame record from The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Miles’ Davis’s 60s electric period and . . . . some other things.

Sean Ono Lennon: I remember taking mushrooms and listening to Inner Mounting Flame actually. So it was actually me and a bunch of friends and .. .It blew our minds so much we jammed for hours afterwards and had a really good time.

We talk to Sean Lennon about his all-instrumental rave up album Asterisms in the Echoes Podcast.

Artist – Title – Album

Dark Sky Alliance - Progressive Ambient: The Echoes Interview

It’s a meeting of artists creating an ambient world, when we talk to Dark Sky Alliance featuring Peter Gabriel drummer Jerry Marotta, guitarist David Helpling, keyboardist Rupert Greenall from The Fixx, and electronic artist Eric “The” Taylor. Their sound is what happens when New Age and New Wave double-date with Progressive Rock and Ambient. Their debut album, Interdwell, is a study in ambience and soundscaping released on the ambient Spotted Peccary Music label.. John Diliberto signs us up with Dark Sky Alliance in the Echoes Podcast from PRX.

Artist – Title – Album

Limina's Orchestral Music Between Worlds: The Echoes Podcast

Take Sigur Ros, add in strings and a more classical sensibility, and you wind up with Limina. That’s the project of Tyler Durham. He’s a journeyman film composer who creates additional music to accompany scores by Pinar Toprak and James Newton Howard. But Limina is his own expression. He creates his music electronically, but then takes his string and orchestral parts to a real orchestra to perform.  Then he messes with that electronically.  The result is a haunting album called Coming Home, that tells a tale of travel and hidden thoughts. John Diliberto talks to Limina on the Echoes Podcast.

Artist – Title – Album

A Long Psychedelic Trip with Zanias: The Echoes Podcast

Zanias usually sings words, but on her latest album, Ecdysis, she takes inspiration from Dead Can Dance and Lisa Gerrard and as well as hallucinogenics.

I’m just so incredibly fascinated by consciousness and the human mind and everything that it’s capable of. So I had to explore everything that I read about when I was a teenager. And I was actually very young when I first experienced psychedelics. It was in Asia and it was magic mushrooms. And they made me just think in such an interesting way and feel things in such an interesting way.

Zanias was a member of the band Linea Aspera and Keluar, but on her albums Chrysalis and Ecdysis, she makes her own deeply grooved, psychedelic sound that tunnels into your psyche. We trip out with Zanias’ Allison Lewis when we talk to her in the Echoes Podcast from PRX.

Artist – Title – Album

A Journey in Ambient Classical Music with Roger Eno: The Echoes Podcast

John Diliberto and Roger Eno

Brian Eno is a giant figure in modern music and certainly here on Echoes. But in Eno’s shadow resides his brother, Roger Eno, 11 years younger. While Brian used to say he was a non-musician, Roger is very much a classically trained musician, and now he’s on the most legendary classical label, Deutsche Grammophon.

Roger Eno: I’m now on Deutsche Grammophon, which to me is a huge accolade. When I was at music college, that was the label, you know, that had these stern Germans doing serious things on it.

Roger Eno is one of the pioneers of Ambient Chamber music. But over the last few years his music has become more neo-classical with albums on Deutsche Grammophon. At Big Ears Festival, Roger Eno takes us down his pastoral path when John Diliberto sits down with him in the Echoes Podcast.

Roger Eno – That Which is Hidden – The Skies, They Shift Like Chords

An Electronic Life with Le Morte d'Abby: The Echoes Podcat

Le Morte d’Abby means “the death of Abby,” but Abigail Lentz, who assumed that artist name, is very much alive and creating some exhilarating electronic music. She was a military brat, but she was also a goth. Now she marshals sequencers, getting them in line. She’s living at the intersection of electronic space music and EDM, modular synthesis and computer synths. IN fact there is much that is in between with this artist, whose real name is Abigail Lentz.  She recently released the album “In Those Days” a melodic sequencer ride. Join John Diliberto when he talks to Le Morte d’Abby on Echoes from PRX.

Le Morte D’Abby – In Those Days – In Those Days

A Kaleidoscopic View of Kaleida: The Echoes Podcast Interview

Christina Wood: It was meant to have a double meaning. It was meant to be like holding babies in arms but also arming yourself to keep on going.

This British-American-German dream pop duo are creating an entrancing sound, much of it emerging from their trans-oceanic separation and from their new born babies. They are millennials who wrote a song criticizing their generation. Cicely Goulder-Levy was scoring films when she got seduced by electronic music. Christina Wood wasn’t really in music at all. She was an environmental engineer.  But they got together, across a couple of continents then, and an ocean now, to create three entrancing albums. Hear their story on Echoes.

Kaleida – Choices – In Arms