PRX: Echoes Interview Podcast

Kraftwerk's Man-Machine Music: The Echoes Documentary It’s the 50 th Anniversary of Kraftwerk’s first release.  The iconic German electronic band switched on their debut album in November, 1970. We’ll hear from Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hutter as well as Orchestral Manouevres in the Dark, Jean-Michel Jarre, Orbital, Michael Rother, Depeche Mode, James Merle Thomas (Quindar), Karl Hyde (Underworld), M...

Greg Lisher-A Rock Refugee: The Echoes Interview In the Echoes Podcast we hear from a rock refugee, Greg   Lisher . You may not know that name, but he’s the guitarist in the bands Camper Van Beethoven and Monks of Doom . He’s built his career over the last three decades in rock music but heads out on an instrumental path that is more Windham Hill than Rock n Roll.  His new album is Songs fro...

Thomas Lemmer & Christoph Sebastian Pabst - Downtempo Dreams: The Echoes Interview In the Echoes Podcast , it’s a new generation of German electronic artists when we talk to Thomas Lemmer and Sebastian Pabst . They’ve been churning out downtempo dreams and electro-lounge moods at a prolific pace. We go inside their studios to find out how the classically trained Lemmer merges with electronic nativ...

Erik Wøllo& Michael Stearns: The Echoes Interview In the Echoes Podcast , we talk about brain tumors, dreams pandemic and some of the best music of 2020 when we talk with Erik Wøllo and Michael Stearns . Stearns is a legend of electronic music from the 1980s. His album, Planetary Unfolding is a classic. Erik Wøllo isn’t far behind with 5 CD of the Month Picks over the last 30 years. But their firs...

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 t...

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 mu...

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...

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...

California Guitar Trio, Hiroki Okano and Silver Apples Remembered in Echoes Podcast California Guitar Trio Interview, Hiroki Okano Profile, Silver Apples’s Simeon Coxe 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 stud...

Shpongle's Simon Posford and Mark Dwane in Echoes Podcast It’s another Electronic Echoes Podcast Including Interviews with Shpongle’s Simon Posford and Guitar-Synthesist Mark Dwane 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 Isol...

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 electro...

Echoes Podcast: Interviews with Electronic Artists Ben Blackett & Jim Ottaway Its an all-electronic Echoes Podcast with interviews featuring Ben Blackett and 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 la...

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...

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...

Echoes Podcast: The Moby Interview Moby talks about his presciently timely new album , All Visible Objects . Written mostly in 2019, its themes of revolution, isolation and contemplation seem to fit right in with these pandemic and protesting times. All Visible Objects harkens back to his dance and DJ days in the 1990s and also goes in more introspective, forlorn directions. Hear Moby’s 2016...

Four Albums from The Best of Echoes 2020, So Far by Austra, YPPAH, Grimes and Darshan Ambient This past week we released The Best of Echoes So Far list, pausing at the midway point of an insane year to contemplate some of the music that has come out in the first six months. We picked 25 of our favorite albums. On this week’s Echoes Podcast , I want to pull out a few releases on the list and...

Tangerine Dream-50 Years of Electronic Meditations: The Echoes Documentary In the Echoes Podcast, the Tangerine Dream Documentary 50 years ago Tangerine Dream began recording their electronic music in what was then West Berlin.  Founded by Edgar Froese, Tangerine Dream has epitomized the electronic age of music, recording over 150 albums of synthesized compositions.  Their film soundtracks include...

Taimane's Ukulele Fury in Echoes Podcast In the Echoes Podcas t, it’s a new generation of Ukulele player when we talk with Taimane . She’s a Hawaiian musician who studied with Jake Shimabukuro and is creating her own ukulele fusion that takes the instrument out of the luau and into the world on albums like Elemental and We Are Made of Stars .. Taimane: I grew up living in Hawaii and that’s all tha...

Emancipator's Electronic Folk and Jade Warrior-World Fusion Innovators in Echoes Podcast In the Echoes Podcast Emancipator and Jade Warrior Emancipator is an electronic musician who mixes synthesizers, sampled sounds and folk instruments into a hallucinatory sound. John Diliberto talks to Emancipator’s Douglas Appling about his father who made dulcimers and spun Orbital and how that shaped his uni...

Michael Whalen's Syntheszier Fantasy: The Echoes Podcast Interview In the Echoes Podcas t, Composer Michael Whalen talks about his April CD of the Month, Sacred Spaces . It’s a return for Whalen to his progressive rock roots as he turns a classical composition into a synthesized fantasy. Sacred Spaces is an electronic symphony full of strikingly original timbres and sounds. An overhead photo of hi...

Echoes Podcast: Kevin Braheny Fortune Talks to the Spirits In the Echoes Podcast it’s the return of a New Age pioneer when we talk with Kevin Braheny Fortune . He went 22 years without a new album, but now he has four releases of ambient music including his Dreamwalker Meditation Music trilogy. In the 1980s his name was mentioned alongside Steve Roach , Robert Rich , Michael Stearns and Rich...

Air's Nicolas Godin and Naneum in Echoes Podcast In the Echoes Podcast Air’s Nicolas Godin and Naneum The French Band AIR was one of the seminal electronic pop groups of the 1990s and oughts. They’ve gone dormant, but founding member Nicolas Godin has a new solo album out, Concrete and Glass, that began as an architectural art project.  john Diliberto Talks to Godin while in quarantine in hi...

Poliça and Nicholas Gunn in Echoes Podcast In the Echoes Podcast we talk to singer Channy Leaneagh of Poliça   and electronic musician Nicholas Gunn . Channy Leaneagh fell off a roof and broke her back, but that didn’t stop her from recording a great album with her group, Poliça   . John Diliberto talks to Poliça’s Channy Leaneagh about her existential songs on the album, When We Stay Alive...

Ambient Chamber Music with AVAWaves and Blue Landscapes in Echoes Podcast. The Breadth of Ambient Chamber Music in the Echoes Podcast with Blue Landscapes  and  AVAWaves. Ambient Chamber Music is a meeting of classical music and ambient music and the duos of AVAWaves and Blue Landscapes are approaching it from very different directions.  Blue Landscapes , is the duo of latin and jazz flutist Damja...

Kitaro & Tigerforest's Gunnar Spardel in Echoes Podcast In the Echoes Podcast Two Generations of Electronic Artists: Tigerforest’s Gunnar Spardel & Kitaro From electronic space to ambient chamber music, we talk to Gunnar Spardel, who composes somber and serene chamber music under his own name and upbeat, progressive electronic music under the guise of Tigerforest . His latest album as Ti...