PRX: Echoes Interview Podcast

Echoes Podcast: The Best of Echoes 2019, So Far In the Echoes Podcast , John Diliberto dissects some of our picks in the top ten of The Best of Echoes 2019 So Far . It’s the midway point of the year which means it’s time to compile our Top 25 albums of the year to date. John Diliberto picks out a handful of those albums and talks about them in the Echoes Podcast. It’s another collection of music t...

White Noise and It's a Beautiful Day in a Double Flashback 50 in the Echoes Podcast. It’s a Double Flashback 50 when we explore two albums from June 1969 that could not be more different.  From London, It’s White Noise with their debut, An Electric Storm and from San Francisco we’ll hear It’s A Beautiful Day . In June of 1969, An Electric Storm  by White Noise was a curious artif...

Meat Beat Manifesto in Echoes Podcast In the Echoes Podcast, Meat Beat Manifesto.   The legendary British electronic artist who came of age during the industrial and trip-hop sampling days of the 1990s.  Jack Dangers , the group’s founder, is a scholar of electronic music from Stockhausen to Cabaret Voltaire and beyond. He has a new MBM album out, Opaque  Couché.   We take an electronic trip with...

Massergy's Song of Tragedy and Psychedelic Ritual in Echoes Podcast Massergy is the performance name of Eric Jensen . His story includes the loss of his brother, learning electronic music from scratch, psychedelics and recording his electronic music out in his yard. His album, Fire Opal was the Echoes CD of the Month in May.  We go behind this ambient electronic journey of an album, and the spirit...

Echoes John Diliberto Dissects 2019's ZMR Music Award Winners. by John Diliberto 5/23/2019 The ZMR AWARDS IS OUT OF THE TYPICAL AWARDS ZONE The Zone Music Reporter Awards or ZMRs , bring a gel-filtered focus on music that often isn’t included in the usual Best Of and Awards lists. The Grammys pretty much ignore these recordings, although some have slipped into the New Age, Electronic, and Contempo...

Chad Lawson's Ambient Piano Pianist Chad Lawson is reinventing the acoustic piano for the electronic age. He came up through classical and jazz and garnered some renown with his album, The Chopin Variations,   turning the Polish composer into something acoustically ambient. But now he’s creating original ambient music, treating his piano with electronic processing to give him a more atmospheric so...

William Tyler's Rural New Age in Echoes Podcast William Tyler is a guitarist who has made it through to hipster circles and records on the highly regarded Merge label. But he’s not afraid to cite Windham Hill Records , astrology, and more as influences. He’s also making the most inventive music of any post-Windham Hill guitarist. His latest album is Goes West . We talk with William Tyl...

Lamb's Secrets in Echoes Podcast In the Echoes Podcast , The acclaimed English electronica band, Lamb , talks about their new album, The Secret of Letting Go . The title speaks to the duo’s sometimes contentious working relationship. Andy Barlow: I think she’s got a version of the album with all of my lyrics removed.  You didn’t like that much, did you? The whole me writing lyrics thing? LR:...

Singer Rachel Eckroth Gets Weird in Echoes Podcast In the Echoes Podcast, we discover the beautiful and edgy dream pop of  Rachel Eckroth . She started out as a jazz pianist but then came a transformation into singer-songwriter and then electronic dream pop which is where she’s at on her latest album. When It Falls .  Along the way, she’s also supported musicians like Rufus Wainwright and Ch...

Alternative Electro-rocker UNKLE Walks Down The Road Trilogy In the Echoes Podcast, UNKLE’s James Lavelle talks about a journey that started at the dawn of trip-hop. He is working on a trilogy of albums called The Road and has just released the second volume, The Road Part II: Lost Highway . It  explores dark themes of drugs, loss and rebirth, with some of his best music in years. We probe U...

Electronic Composer Kevin Keller Goes Retro-Space in Echoes Podcast In the Echoes Podcast , ambient chamber music composer Kevin Keller talks about going back to his roots to compose the retro-electronic sound of his latest album, Ice Worlds . It was the Echoes CD of the Month in March. It’s a beautiful album of effervescent electronic music with retro-futurist sound design and beautiful, ki...

Echoes' Big Hits of Big Ears Festival 2019 Comet is Coming: Betamax-Danalogue-King Shabaka-Photo: Jeff Towne Echoes’ John Diliberto spent four days in immersion of music from the edges at the Big Ears Festival 2019, taking place in Knoxville, TN the weekend of March 21-24.  He saw 24 concerts in four days, ranging from the ambient chamber music of Harold Budd, to the screaming electric guita...

Primer Travels Back in Electro-Pop Time In the Echoes Podcast , we trip in time with Primer  and we remember Gert Van Santens of Wave World . Primer is the prep coating of paint. It’s also a textbook. And it’s the name chosen by Alyssa Midcalf , a Detroit based artist for her stripped down electronic pop. It comes from an obscure but compelling movie about time travel. She explores dark terrain an...

Saul Stokes Talks Electronic Expansion in Echoes Podcast He used to make his own electronic instruments and when he plays live, he doesn’t use any computers. That’s a few of the things that make Saul Stokes a unique musician on the electronic scene. Kevin Keller , who has the March CD of the Month , said “I think he’s a total genius. I mean that guy is so amazing.” Saul Stokes co...

Yagull's Intimate Requiem in Echoes Podcast Coming up on Echoes we talk to Yagull , the husband and wife duo of guitarist Sasha Markovic from Serbia and pianist Kana Kamitsubo from Japan. Together, they’ve created a beautiful requiem album of loss called Yuna . We talk to Yagull on Echoes.

Inside Big Ears Festival 2019 in Echoes Podcast Get Big Ears in the Echoes Podcast . You need a big mind to explore the Big Ears Festival 2019 .  Big Ears celebrates its 10 th anniversary in Knoxville, TN, as one of the most wide-ranging, furthest thinking music festivals in America. We talk to founder Ashley Capps, who also founded Big Ears and revived Moogfest, about a festival that embraces ECM...

Echoes Podcast: Eleon-From Walmart to Space. ELEON is a musician from Waco, Texas who has been isolated from the music world, working at Walmart. He finally released his debut CD in his late 40s, but he created one of the most exuberant, effervescent electronic albums of 2018, Dreams Beyond Terra . We head west to explore the Sci-Fi electronic music of ELEON along with his producer, ambient guitar...

Bluetech Interview: The Electrocaplyse is Coming In the Echoes Podcast , we ride with the fifth horseman of the Electrocalypse, Bluetech . Bluetech is a longtime denizen of downtempo electronics and he’s just completed his four album series, The Four Horsemen of the Electrocalypse . He also pays tribute to 70s space electronics with his album, Liquid Geometries . Plug in and ride when Bluetech tal...

Lena Natalia's New Wave Neo-Classical Music In the Echoes Podcast, we talk with ambient chamber music composer, Lena Natalia . Lena is classically trained, spent a lot of time in France and has emerged with a distinctive Neo-classical to ambient sound. Her album, Lonely Satellite was in Echoes Top 25 for 2018 . Hear about her story and her cat in the Echoes Podcast.

Jean-Michel Jarre in Echoes Podcast In the  Echoes Podcast ,  we head into Infinity with Jean-Michel Jarre . The iconic French electronic artist talks about his latest album, Equinoxe Infinity , which references his second album from 40 years ago. We bring Jean-Michel Jarre talking about electronic evolution on Echoes. Read CD of the Month review of Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxygene Trilogy Hear J...

Alexandra Streliski Talks About Her Creaky Piano Miniatures. In the Echoes Podcast , pianist Alexandra Streliski talks about burning out, scoring HBO’s Sharp Objects and her latest album of miniatures, Inscape .  She recorded with her childhood upright piano, all creaks and squeeks part of the intimate sound she creates. We tickle Alexandra Streliski’s ivories on Echoes.

Buck Curran in Echoes Podcast: From Blues to Arborea to Raga and Beyond Guitarist Buck Curran was one half of the psychedelic duo Arborea with singer Shanti Curran. They put out several albums between 2006 and 2013 including Wayfaring Summer and Fortress of the Sun. But Curran is out on his own now and has released a couple of solo albums including his latest Morning Haikus, Afternoon Ragas . We c...