PRX: Echoes Interview Podcast

Mark Isham goes Crazy on the Carousel; The Echoes Podcast Trumpeter Mark Isham returns with his first solo album in 27 years. Isham is a musician who has stretched musical boundaries for four decades, with Group 87 , his early electronic album, Vapor Drawings and numerous film and TV scores, including A River Runs Through It , Blade , Crash , Cool World and most recently, The Westies . He has a ne...

Pete Roth and Bill Bruford - Fusion Ignited: The Echoes Podcast. Bill Bruford is one of the greatest drummers of our age and certainly the greatest in Progressive Rock playing with Yes , King Crimson , UK and Earthworks . He retired 13 years ago and got doctorate in music. He claims to have not even touched the drums in that time. But live performance pulled him back in the form of a younger music...

Wires & Wind - Peter Phippen & Eric "the" Taylor: The Echoes Podcast   Our CD of the Month in September was Two by Twilight from Peter Phippen and Eric “The” the Taylor . Today, I’ve got both musicians talking about what went into making an album that brought two veteran musicians together for the first time. Phippen is a highly regarded world flutist who started out in the Native flute scene...

Echoes Podcast: Genesis & Marillion Guitarists Fly Together - Steve Hackett & Steve Rothery: The Echoes Interview In the Echoes Podcast a meeting of two guitar virtuosos of sonic manipulation and melody. There have been a lot of electric guitar duets over the years, John McLaughlin recorded duet albums at different times with Larry Coryell and Carlos Santana ; John Scofield and Pat Metheny got tog...

The Guitar Magic and Mayhem of Jeff Beck with biographers Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill: The Echoes Podcast In the Echoes Podcast , the beauty and chaos of Jeff Beck, an iconoclastic guitarist, when we talk to biographers Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill . When John Diliberto was growing up, there were three musicians that formed a holy trinity of guitarists: Eric Clapton , Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck ....

Spotted Peccary Music celebrates its 40th Anniversary In the Echoes Podcast, it’s all about Spotted Peccary Music as the pioneering ambient and electronic label celebrates its 40th anniversary. They have outlasted Windham Hill , Narada , Hearts of Space Records and many more. Artists like David Helpling , Deborah Martin , Chronotope Project ,  Craig Padilla and Rudy Adrian have been part of...

A Meeting in Ambience: Michael Stearns & Robert Rich: The Echoes Podcast   In the Echoes Podcast, two electronic musicians who were part of the original 1980s California new age and space music scenes. Michael Stearns and Robert Rich are icons of electronic music and have recorded their first album ever together, Reunion of Breath and Waves . And they did it in person face to face, synth to s...

Thoughts Through Sound - David Helpling & Scott Reich: The Echoes Podcast   On the Echoes Podcast , David Helpling and Scott Reich go Through the Thought Horizon . They are musicians exploring a philosophical ambience. David Helpling you might know from his many solo works, collaborations with Jon Jenkins and Dark Sky Alliance . Scott Reich is less well-known. He’s a pianist and electronic co...

Mutantrumpet Creator Ben Neill Proposes an Age of Music Democratization: Echoes Podcast Mutantrumpeter Ben Neill argues for musical democracy now! in the Echoes Podcast .. If you’ve listened to Echoes over the last 30 years, you’ve heard the music of Ben Neill a lot. He plays an instrument called the mutantrumpet which has 3 trumpet bells, a trombone slide, two sets of valves and a lot of electron...

Hammock's Psychedelic Revelations: The Echoes Podcast The ambient guitar duo Hammock have become darlings of both the post-rock and ambient scenes. Yet, although they may attract a hipster audience, their music is imbued with Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson’s evangelical upbringing and their subsequent rejection of much of that doctrine. It informs  alot of their new album, The Second Coming was a M...

An Electronic Revolution-Tonto's Expanding Head Band 55th: The Echoes Podcast It has been 55 years since Tonto’s Expanding Head Band first took flight on the 1971 album, Zero Time . Recorded on their electronic array called TONTO , it predated by years the sequencer-driven recordings of Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra , Klaus Schulze’s Picture Music and Kraftwerk’s Autobahn . It...

The Physics of Love-KÁRYYN: The Echoes Podcast In the Echoes Podcast, an extraordinary artist for you, KÁRYYN . She is an electronic singer-songwriter of Armenian descent who came up through the experimental world studying with electronic and Deep Listening composer Pauline Oliveros .  She has released her second album, Physics Universal Love Language (PULL) . Her music is centered around her voic...

Will Ackerman on Windham Hill and Philip Aaberg, R.I.P. in Echoes Podcast Today we were just going to bring you our interview with Will Ackerma n, the founder of Windham Hill Records as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of that label. But then we got the news that pianist Philip Aaberg , a stalwart Windham Hill artist, had left the planet on May 23. So first we will hear our Will Ackerman intervie...

The Complete Derek Shulman Interview-The Tale of a Gentle Giant in Echoes Podcast Almost everyone is familiar with the big progressive rock groups of the 70s like Yes , Genesis , King Crimson and Emerson Lake and Palmer . But one of the bands bubbling just under the surface was Gentle Giant . To true aficionados of the progressive rock genre they were icons. Early this year, the lead singer of the...

From Apes to Humanity - Felsmann & Tiley: The Echoes Podcast In the Echoes Podcast , techno DJs Felsmann & Tiley take the ambient classical pill and dial up a cinematic electronic sound on their second album, Protomensch . They come in from the cold of hard techno for a warmer, more hypnotic sound that is a long way from the dance floor. Patrick Tiley: “We were a bit more youthful and en...

Craig Padilla & Marvin Allen's Post-Rock Space Music for the 21st Century: The Echoes Podcast In the Echoes Podcast electronic artist Craig Padilla and guitarist Marvin Allen. They have released a quartet of albums that traverse the world of ambient, progressive rock and psychedelic music. Their latest is Unfolding Skies . It is Echoes April CD of the Month.  Its cosmic sounds were all recorded in...

Flore Laurentienne's Prog Rock Inspired Ambient Chamber Music: The Echoes Podcast In the Echoes Podcast,  an interview with Canadian composer Mathieu David Gagnon who records ambient chamber music as Flore Laurentienne . He mixes acoustic instruments with vintage analog synthesizers including the Mini-Moog. He recently released the inauspiciously titled album, Volume III . He’s making a more lush...

Joan La Barbara's Vocal Circus: The Echoes Podcast In the Echoes Podcast we have avant-garde icon Joan La Barbara . I have avant-garde vocal icon Joan La Barbara, who, along with Meredith Monk, change the way a voice could sound in music, opening up a world of deeper expressions. We play a lot of singers on this show who create imaginary languages. Vocalists like Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins...

Antique, Vintage and Transcendent: The Sound of Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore in the Echoes Podcast The harp is often thought of as a heavenly instrument plucked by angels. And gothic voices have certainly called to the heavens. Those are attributes that harpist Mary Lattimore  and singer and electronic musician  Julianna Barwick  attain on their album,   Tragic Magic . Mary Lattimore isn’t yo...

Flipping the Script-Gentle Giant's Derek Shulman's Journey from Prog Singer to Pop Executive There are many progressive rock bands that still stalk the earth. Yes , King Crimson , Van Der Graaf Generator . But not Gentle Giant . They made all their records during Prog Rock’s glory years in the 1970s and then called it quits. While their legacy continues on as one of the most innovative and e...

A Blitz of Sounds from the Edge - Big Ears Festival 2026: the Echoes Interview with Ashley Capps In the Echoes Podcast it’s our annual interview with Ashley Capps , the founder of Big Ears Festival . He also created Bonaroo and resurrected Moogfest . We cover Big Ears because they often have a lot of Echoes artists and they are just the best, most civilized and most surprising festival in America....

Head into Deepspace with Deepspace: The Echoes Podcast When you name yourself deepspace you better live up to it. Mirko Ruckels, who is deepspace, has been doing that since 2007. His album, Neon Blue Utopia was a CD of the Month this past January and he has a new one called Water Planets . You might tell from those titles that Ruckels is influenced by science fiction. Mirko Ruckels: “I&#8217...

Hania Rani Storms the World: The Echoes Podcast Polish composer and pianist Hania Rani has been quickly rising to the surface in a see of ambient chamber music and neo-classical composers going mellow. But her new album breaks from that movement even though she initially saw as rebellious to her own classical background. Hania Rani This music was so simple and but also different and also intriguin...

Mike Oldfield's Ommadawn at 50: The Echoes Podcast   In the Echoes Podcast , Tubular Bells ’ composer Mike Oldfield talks about Ommadawn , his two-sided epic from 1975. Mike Oldfield changed the world of progressive rock and instrumental music with his 1973 opus, Tubular Bells. But two years later he released this third album that many consider to be his masterpiece. It was released 50 years...

Azam Ali's Synesthesia Therapy: The Echoes Podcast Singer Azam Ali from Vas , and Niyaz graces the Echoes Podcast. The voice of Azam has been part of the Echoes soundscape for 3 decades. Her Persian fusion groups, Vas and Niyaz, were seminal acts and her solo albums have included chants of Abbess Hildegard von Bingen , and hymns of Sephardic Jews sung in Ladino, to the electronic-driven sounds of...