PRX: Echoes Interview Podcast

Echoes Podcast: Agnes Obel, the 25th Icon of Echoes and Emancipator, Rena Jones and Flowerpulse Emancipator, Rena Jones, and Flowerpulse weave their electronic roots together into the ambient excursion of Xylem , their debut album. Emancipator has been featured heavily on the show with his gritty electronic sound, while Rena Jones is an old favorite who mixes electronics with her cello and violin....

Gary Numan and Earth's Revenge: The Echoes Interview Gary Numan paints a dystopian nightmare where earth takes revenge for a civilization that has fostered environmental and military catastrophe. Musically, his new album, Intruder , it’s a long way from his hit single, “Cars,” but listen close and lyrically it’s not.  We ponder the apocalypse with Gary Numan in the Echoes P...

Sufjan Steven's Meditations; Mythos at XXV and Patrick O'Hearn, the 22nd Icon in the Echoes Podcast It’s a packed Echoes Podcast that begins with Sufjan Stevens going ambient, accesses the 25-year history of Mythos and ends with the 22nd Icon of Echoes, Patrick O’Hearn First up in the podcast will be idiosyncratic folk-rocker Sufjan Stevens who shuts up and plays his synthesizers.  His...

Jess Lamb & The Factory: Manufacturing a Soulful Dreampop In the Echoes Podcast, Jess Lamb and the Factory take us into their album of spiritual search and identity. And then there’s American Idol . They are a Cincinnati band fronted by singer Jess Lamb and includes Warren Harrison from the duo Hungry Lucy . They’ve created a deep spiritual meditation partly shaped by Pandemic called Y...

Ulrich Schnauss-The Sound of Utopia: The 20th Icon of Echoes Ulrich Schnauss is the 20th of 30 Icons for 30 Years of Echoes . We’ve been enthralled by his music since his second album, A Strangely Isolated Place . When his first album was issued in America after that release, we made it a CD of the Month . We get immersed in the world of Ulrich Schnauss with a meditation on his sound and ins...

From Man-Machines to Mind-Blowing: Kraftwerk, the 19th Icon of Echoes and Shpongle's Shponglogenic Sounds at 25. A double dose of electronic sound in the Echoes Podcast from Man-Machines to Mind-Blowing. We get Shpongled when we talk to Simon Posford and Raja Ram of the psychedelic electronic duo, Shpongle . They talk about their hallucinogenic sound and their deep music backgrounds that inform th...

London Grammar Digs Californian Soil and Michael Hedges-The 18th Icon of Echoes London Grammar are the seductive and serene band who are releasing their third perfect dream pop album in a row. They artfully mix songs of love and loss with themes of political betrayal and social injustice, anchored by the shadowed voice of Hannah Reid .  And on their new album, Californian Soil , Reid even finds lo...

Jean-Michel Jarre, 17th Icon of Echoes and Decouplr-Two Generations of Electronic Sound In the Echoes Podcast, we flip the switch on Jean-Michel Jarre , the 17 th Icon of Echoes for Jean-Michel Jarre-An Icon of Electronic Music: The Echoes Documentary . The French electronic artist brought electronic music to global popularity with his 1976 album, Oxygene , bringing the space music sound to new au...

Echoes Podcast: Grandbrothers and Jeff Johnson & Phil Keaggy: The Echoes Interviews In the Echoes Podcast , the German duo Grandbrothers .  They play a grand piano hooked up with electronics and a machine to generate an orchestral sound live.  Erol Sapp and Lukas Vogel Zoom in to talk about their sound which is in a lineage from John Cage to Conlon Nancarrow to Hauska to Olafur Arnalds . Their lat...

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...

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

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 Sharif i. 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 13 th 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...

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 21 st century.  Wax Tailor is Jean-Christophe Le Saoût , and  The Shadow of their Suns  is his most political album to date,...

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...

Enya-The 10th Icon and Desensitized Interview in Echoes Podcast It’s the 10 th 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. See our list of The Five Best Enya Albums See the c...

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 Num...

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 8 th Icon of Echoes is Steve Reich . The minimalist composer’s Music for 18 Musicians is...

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 7...

Echoes Podcast: Composer Kevin Keller, Cellist David Darling Remembered and an Icon of Echoes, Vangelis In the Echoes Podcast we hear an interview with Kevin Keller, we remember cellist David Darling, and celebrate the sixth Icon of Echoes, Vangelis. Ambient chamber music composer Kevin Keller had a scare last year when he went in for heart surgery. It made him contemplate life and what happens wh...

Olafur Arnalds in Search of Peace: The Echoes Podcast Interview We talk to Icelandic composer , Ólafur Arnalds . Ever since his 2007 debut album, Eulogy for Evolution,  he’s been a leading avatar of ambient chamber music, combining classical forms and electronic ambiences.  HIs previous album, Re:member , was among his most complex, using the stratus piano system of upright, self-performing...

Roedelius, Thievery Corporation & Philip Glass, an Icon of Echoes, in Echoes Podcast. Hans-Joachim Roedelius was a founding member of the bands Cluster and Harmonia , groups that influenced artists like David Bowie on his Berlin Trilogy and especially Brian Eno , who not only co-produced that trilogy, but went on to make music with these musicians as well. But while Roedelius began in the electron...

Echoes Podcast: Dead Can Dance Icons of Echoes and We Remember Harold Budd 1936-2020 In the Echoes Podcast , It’s the fourth Icon of Echoes:  Dead Can Dance . This duo of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry have created some of the most transcendent, time-shifting music of the late 20 th century. From the score to Gladiator to albums of tribal mysticism, hear Gerrard and Perry tell their story, f...

Ane Brun & Steve Roach in Echoes Podcast Norwegian singer  Ane Brun  has been captivating us for several years now. She sang with  Peter Gabriel  on his tours and on the version of “Don’t Give Up” that appears on Gabriel’s  New Blood  album. As a solo artist who released her debut in 2003,  she started out as something of a conventional singer song-writer, inspired by  Nick Drake ,  Leonard Cohen...

30 Icons of Echoes and Brian Eno, #1 Icon Ruminations on 30 Icons of Echoes and Brian Eno, #1 Icon, Profiled in Echoes Podcast. For our last celebration of Echoes’ first 30 years, we’ve selected the 30 Icons of Echoes . These are the artists who have informed the show over our first 30 years. We started with the 25 Icons from our 25th Anniversary and, with listener votes, we’ve added five mo...