PRX: Echoes Interview Podcast

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...

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...