(May 2005)

Yo-Yo Ma & The Silk Road Ensemble
Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon

There are few icons in modern music who cross boundaries and genres, culture and class with the ease of cellist Yo-Yo Ma. His name is universal enough that when he was a guest on the television show West Wing, staff assistant Donna Moss could proclaim "Yo-Yo Ma rules," and there was no need to explain who he is or why he's important. It's just understood. Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon (Sony Classical) is the sequel to his 2002 Album, When Strangers Meet. Once again, Ma has assembled a cast of virtuoso musicians spanning across greater Asia, including China's Wu-Man, a master of the pipa, and Armenian duduk player Gevorg Dabaghyan. But better than that, he's gotten composers from across this geographic region to create new compositions or to recast traditional music.

Beyond the Horizon is like an Asian caravan, picking up and dropping off musicians along the Silk Road path. Sometimes the results are a sophisticated global jam session like "Oasis," sometimes, it's a sweeping orchestral arrangement like the cinematic expanse of Zhao Jiping and Zhao Lin's "Distant Green Valley." Iranian composer Kayhan Kalhor's "Mountains Are Far Away" is a deep meditation on tone and time as the composer also bows he raw-edged stringed instrument, the kamancheh, playing off the more refined tones of Ma and his string septet. For the ecstatic vocal of Nilanjani Dey that opens the album, to Wu-man's gentle pipa plucks on the closing "Sacred Cloud Music," the Silk Road Ensemble recasts tradition in a new world.

Christopher O'Riley
Hold Me To This

As host of the public radio show "From the Top," pianist Christopher O'Riley is a competitor to our own radio show. But that's not stopping us from picking his latest album as our CD of the Month for April. When he released True Love Waits: Christopher O'Riley Plays the Music of Radiohead in 2003, many were surprised at the inventiveness of his interpretations and the way he recast the progressive rock band's music while still retaining its essential character. Now he's returned with a second album that might be even better. While piano renditions of Radiohead could be muzak, O'Riley moves in quite the opposite direction with knotty, challenging re-inventions full of overtone clusters and spiraling counterpoints. Yet, the essential melodicism, incisive drive and quirky structures of Radiohead still ring out as O'Riley finds the rock and let's the classical breathe. Close your eyes and you might think you're at a classical recital ranging from Chopin to Nancarrow. Open your ears and you'll hear music with Radiohead's delirious exhilaration.

Soulfood
Mystic Canyons

Soulfood flies under the conventional music radar. After releasing their first album, Breathe, into the ambient ethno-techno market in 1998, they've effectively gone underground into the gift market. It's a nether-region of music, supplying everything from yoga studios to national park gift shops. Sometimes this music is functional and market driven, like Yoga Dreams, but sometimes it transcends its utilitarian goals. DJ Free a.k.a Gordy Schaeffer is Soulfood, and with various collaborators, he's released over 20 CDs in the last seven years. Some transcend, some don't. Mystic Canyons rises above. For Mystic Canyons, Soulfood returns to the sound of his first album, Breathe, creating a Native American ambient music, albeit one less electronica-driven. DJ Free plays Native flute, guitar and synthesizers, but is helped out by Anakwad (Frank Montano) of the Ojibwe tribe on flutes and chants and Rita Coolidge on chants. Soulfood uses the chants judiciously, to set the mood on atmospheric pieces like "Distant Spirits." Soulfood's take on ambient Native music is lush, full of plush synthesizer pads and lots of reverb, but he also has a grounded sense of melody, with flute playing that bends and arches like the arc of a hawk traversing the Sonoran Plateau. As befitting Soulfood's DJ roots, Mystic Canyons is a seamless flow, moving from the quietly triumphal guitar strumming of "Canyon Echoes" to the deep meditation of "Thunder Song" which recalls the flute choirs of Coyote Oldman. There's even a piano reverie on "Mystic Canyons Part 2." Mystic Canyons may show up in Grand Canyon gift shops, but it's a souvenir of the spirit. © 2005 John Diliberto

Other Recommended Soulfood CDs:
Breathe
Wingmakers
Guitar Meditations (w/Billy McLaughlin)

Harold Budd
Avalon Sutra

Harold Budd is a romantic with a classicist's soul and an experimentalist's curiosity. He's never opted for the obvious ploys for the heartstrings. Instead, Budd explores the geometry of passion, the calculus of love and the shadows of memories. The 68 year old musician is the patron saint of ambient chamber music, with adherents like Tim Story, Kevin Keller, and David Darling following in his footsteps. But Budd says that his musical path has come to an end and Avalon Sutra is his swansong. If that's true, then few musicians have gone out on such a high, albeit muted, note. Avalon Sutra is a materpiece of ambient chamber miniatures as Budd threads his tremulous, spartan piano themes amidst a string quartet, the reeds of Jon Gibson and ambient atmospheres. It's a CD that seems haunted by memories and longing, and many of the pieces bear dedications to people in Budd's life. If there's a flaw to Avalon Sutra, it's that some of the pieces are simply too short. You want to hear these pearls extended and developed. That happens on a second bonus disc, an expanded remix by Akira Rabelais. He takes Budd's miniatures and stretches them and reforges them into a single extended meditation. If Budd's songs are snapshots, Rabelais makes them into a slow motion cinematic opus. Either disc leaves you immersed in a world of bittersweet melancholy.

© 2005 John Diliberto

Green Isac
Etnotronica

It was difficult choosing Green Isac as our first CD of the month for 2005. For one thing, it would mean three out of the last four CD of the Month selections would be by Norwegians! For another, the album actually came out in November. But the end of the year is always a heavy time for new releases and sometimes, great albums get lost in the shuffle or just don't hit us at the right time. That was the case with Green Isac's Etnotronica. Green Isac inhabits a quirky world of ambient music where charming melodies and arrangements fall somewhere between faux-exotica and the trash heap, a meeting ground of the Penguin Café Orchestra and Cluster. Etnotronica continues the sound the Norwegian duo began back in 1991, with pulsing ethno-percussive rhythms loops, global exotica and elliptical structures that keep folding back in on themselves. Engagingly guileless, Green Isac is as likely to pick up djembes and bongos as Moog bass and Fender Rhodes piano. Lap steel guitar meets yang-ch'in (Chinese hammered dulcimer) at a crossroads of African drums and electronic pulsations on "Dr. Talk's Bagpipe." What sets them apart from so many of their peers, who simply loop rhythms into drones of infinity, is a gift for the hook. Andreas Eriksen is a member of the electro-pop group Bel Canto and that melodic sensibility carries over to Green Isac. In fact, Bel Canto singer Anneli Drecker guests on "Siamese Drum," with some of her patented ecstatic wordless vocalese. Green Isac orchestrates an often haunting sound world, but instead of a wink, they've got a twinkle in their eyes.

© 2005 John Diliberto

Anja Lechner & Vasillis Tsabropoulos
Chants, Hymns and Dances

In the 1970s, someone dubbed ECM Records "the most beautiful sound next to silence." No one has fulfilled that ideal more than Anja Lechner and Vasillis Tsabropoulos with their album CHANTS, HYMNS AND DANCES (ECM). Lechner is the German cellist with the Rosamunde Quartet and the Greek-born Tsabropoulos has several jazz trio albums out. On CHANTS, HYMNS & DANCES they adapt the music of Armenian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann in a series of serene improvisations that will have you redefining your concepts of beauty. Gurdjieff wasn't a musician, but he would sing his melodies to de Hartmann, who then wrote them out.

These are simple songs and modal themes that left on their own, are sweet, innocent gems. But Lechner & Tsabropoulos take these themes and expand them in lyric improvisations that will leave you breathless. Tsabropoulos drops notes like liquid mercury while Lechner sings her cello lines, perhaps much as Gurdjieff sung them to de Hartmann. In the center of two suites of Gurdjieff compositions are three works by Tsabropoulos. He bases his music on Byzantine church hymns and they share Gurdjieff's Middle Eastern sensibility, mixed with the gothic echoes of European classical music. Producer Manfred Eicher has refined this CD down to an essence that is rarely found in music. Recorded in a church in Frankfurt, if you boost the volume on the sustained ring-outs, you can hear children playing outside, a perfect metaphor for the innocence and spirituality of this CD. Historically, we've picked seasonal CDs for our December CD of the month, but I can't think of a better recording with which to contemplate the season.

© 2004 John Diliberto

Erik Wollo
Blue Sky, Red Guitars

Erik Wollo's music floats with the grace of a hawk, effortlessly riding air currents that are left painted and glistening in his wake. But what sounds effortless is actually deeply layered, intricately woven and composed with a poetic language. Sometimes Erik is acoustic, as on GUITAR NOVA, sometimes all electronic, like POLAR DRONES, but it's on the blending of these two worlds that BLUE SKY, RED GUITARS really glistens. Erik Wollo bases most of his compositions on ostinato patterns that flicker at your consciousness like a mandala in motion, constantly cycling in prismatic shifts. Because of this modal approach, and his arching single string e-bow solos, Wollo's music has an Indian sensibility, without sounding Indian at all. Revealing roots that you might not suspect from most of his music, Wollo covers two songs from German electro-dance godfathers, Kraftwerk. He transforms their "In the Hall of Mirrors" and "Computerlove" into pastoral guitar chamber instrumentals. It's difficult to make music that is at once pristine and still screams through the air, but Erik Wollo does it on BLUE SKY, RED GUITARS, an album that is about as perfect as they come.

© 2004 John Diliberto

Jan Garbarek
In Praise of Dreams

There are many musicians who see music with borders and attempt to break them down. Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek doesn't see boundaries at all. He passes through gateways and crosses over borders without acknowledgment. I first heard him in the early 1970s blowing torrid, Coltrane-inspired solos across the knotty music of jazz composer George Russell. Soon thereafter, Garbarek joined the nascent ECM Records and quickly became one of their flagship artists, creating a uniquely atmospheric brand of jazz. In the intervening decades, he's recorded gothic hymns with the Hilliard Ensemble, reconstructed Norwegian folk music and played chamber jazz with pianist Keith Jarrett. Garbarek's collaborators include Tunisian oud players, Indian sitarists and Sami singers. He's also had a penchant for making atmospheric records that owe little to jazz. Albums like All Those Born With Wings were studio constructions, as Garbarek over-dubbed saxophones and played keyboards in moody tone poems. In Praise of Dreams is in that tradition. Garbarek reaches for the mystical on this album of haunting chamber themes, playing across rhythm loops, spare percussion from Manu Katché and the almost nostalgic sounding viola of Kim Kashkashian. He orchestrates many of his improvisations off Kashkashian's viola, echoing her melody lines, then spiraling out with a soprano sound that cuts to the core, and tenor saxophone that seems to smolder on lava fields. In this case the lava fields are distinctly chilled grooves. Partly a hymn, partly a call to an interior world, In Praise of Dreams is a gothic hymn in a cathedral of the imagination.

© 2004 John Diliberto

(Sep04)

Jeff Johnson & Brian Dunning
The Katurran Odyssey (Sep04)

Jeff Johnson and Brian Dunning have been setting fantasy novels and Celtic myths to music since they got together on the Songs of Albion discs more than a decade ago. Their latest CD finds them creating a score for Terryl Whitlatch's illustrated book, The Katurran Odyssey. Whitlatch has been working at Lucas films for years, designing creatures for Star Wars films, among other things. But Johnson amd Dunning don't opt for a prog-rock opus or light and breezy New Age landscape. Instead, they orchestrate a richly textured panorama with Johnson's inventive keyboard textures and melodic touch along with the airy themes of Dunning's flute. Tracks like "Behind the Water Wall" conjure up an air of mystery and portent with Janet Chatval's ghost fairy vocals and Johnson's ostinato piano of portent. Fiddler John Fitzpatrick scratches out a troll-like dance on "Shifting Sands" over thudding percussion hits and Johnson's wafting synthesizer atmospheres. Dunning's staccato ripsaw flute provides an unusual rhythm for "Following the Butterflies." The Katurran Odyssey is a bit less obvious in its influences than previous CDs, which often relied on Middle Eastern and Celtic themes. Instead, Johnson and Dunning have opted for a more impressionistic sound that conjures in its own world.

© 2004 John Diliberto

(Aug04)

Layne Redmond
Invoking the Muse

Layne Redmond came of age at the height of the global percussion boom in the early 1990s, which peaked with Micky Hart's Planet Drum. She was a member of the Glen Velez group then and from that master of frame drumming she learned how to dissect and bisect a rhythm ten ways towards infinity. On her own, Redmond has pursued the spiritual side of drumming, finding resonance in ancient trance and healing traditions. Invoking the Muse is her most fully realized recording to date. The concept is nine hymns based on "Hymn to the Muse," written by Mesomedes of Crete in the second century A.D. Redmond weaves a hypnotic world of ritual and dreams using trance rhythms performed by herself and Tommy Brunjes, singers Laurel Massé and Ruth Cunningham, and the virtuoso soloing of bansuri flute player Steve Gorn and violinist Vicki Richards. The women's choirs sometimes sound a little daffy, but on tracks like "Radiant Pleasure" and "Moon's Lament" they lend a serene repose with melodies and harmonies that Redmond feels are extensions of her frame drum rhythms. Gorn, Richards and the lead singers seem to dip into the pads of the women's choir as if they were ladeling ethereal melodies out of a pond. Although Redmond wrote most of the tracks, one piece will be familiar to Echoes listeners. It's Glen Velez's "Seven Heaven," a piece she, Gorn and Velez recorded on the 1987 album of the same name. Here, Redmond switches to African mbiras to underscore Gorn's curving melodic arc. Many meditation- based percussion CDs can be deadly dull out of context. Layne Redmond's Invoking the Muse transcends the genre's limitations.

© 2004 John Diliberto

(July04)

Fritz Heede
Illuminated Manuscripts

The Echoes CD of the Month is usually the latest, greatest CD we find in a given month. In fact, we usually pick the disc even before it's released. This month's disc is different. It actually came out early last year, but it only recently got into our hands at Echoes. And it impressed us so much we decided to make an exception so it doesn't get lost. Illuminated Manuscripts is a vibrant world fusion CD orchestrated by multi-instrumentalist Fritz Heede. You've heard him recently playing with Suzanne Teng, but he's an artist in his own right, working mostly on film and TV soundtracks. Illuminated Manuscripts is also a soundtrack to a kaleidoscopic animated DVD of the same name. Like that DVD, Heede's music transports you into a constantly morphing, surreal world full of propulsive rhythms, serpentine melodies and floating ambiences. It's a virtual middle eastern dervish in a psychedelic dream with Heede weaving his guitars, sitar and keyboards in with a group that includes percussionist Gilbert Levy, world flutist Suzanne Teng and a host of middle eastern musicians playing oud, douduk, and kanun. It's the presence of live musicians that sets Heede's work apart from that of cut-and-paste, ethno-techno laptop jockeys. And if you really want to blow your mind, check out the DVD of Illuminated Manuscripts. ©2004 John Diliberto Buy the DVD>> see examples of images from the DVD>>

(June04)

BT
Music from and Inspired by the Film Monster

Monster was a harrowing film portrait of Aileen Carol Wuornos, a street prostitute who was executed for killing seven men in Florida during the 1980s. But even as I watched the film and its tragic tale of Wuornos's destructive circumstances, near redemption and ultimate spiral toward her demise, I was drawn to the powerful underscore by BT, (Brian Transeau). BT is best known in electronic dance circles, but he stepped outside that framework into ambient terrain for Monster. From the opening "Childhood Montage" sequence, it's apparent this won't be the normal Hollywood film score. Taking cues from Brian Eno and Thomas Newman, BT crafts a melancholy refrain of tremolo guitar, chime-like keyboards and ripped metal into a haunting landscape. Like a lot of artists lately, BT is finding ambient atmospheres in a rustic Americana which he deploys in the slide guitars and dobros of "Girl's Kisses." Even the gamelan effects of "The Bus Stop" harken to American maverick Harry Partch. To really hear BT's magic, listen to the additional 5:1 surround DVD. BT adds-in nine extra ambient interlude tracks, creating an extended suite that enhances the atmospheres, as instruments are deployed throughout the 5:1 sound spectrum, hocketing themes across the room. This isn't one of those surround mixes with just ambience in the back channels. BT envelops you in the score, with any given instrument coming from any 360 degree point in the room. The DVD also features a mini-documentary on the score with BT and director Patty Jenkins and scenes from the film with options to listen with dialogue, sound effects or music. Whether you listen to the standard CD, or the 5:1 surround mix, Monster is a soundtrack that stands apart from the movie.

(May04)

(April04)

Stephen DeRuby
Sacred Spaces

On Echoes we like music that falls in the cracks. Music that defies easy categorization, that seems to toss out bridges from acoustic to electronic, ancient to the future, earthy to ethereal. Stephen DeRuby does that adroitly, and unselfconsciously on his latest album, Sacred Spaces. Stephen DeRuby is a flute maker and player who draws from a global palette. Playing all the instruments himself, DeRuby mixes guitar, Chinese harps, hammered dulcimer, percussion and keyboards in a subtly nuanced landscape. Atop it all are DeRuby's array of Native American flutes. He creates flute choirs on the tine-stepping rhythms of "Infinity," layering bass and soprano flutes, with an Armenian duduk that infiltrates the space in serpentine undulations. Sacred Spaces is a spirit dance of musical exotica, wafting with the aroma of an Indian temple one moment, spiraling in middle eastern arabesques the next. DeRuby isn't compositionally robust. Songs seem to begin in the middle of nowhere and end the same way. Melodies are sometimes carefully drawn and detailed, other times carelessly strewn about the exotic textures. With titles like "Within You," "Revelation" and "Astral Traveler", DeRuby is clearly poised towards the new age and meditative market. But Sacred Spaces exceeds those expectations.

(Mar04)

Lanterna
Highways

Lanterna is at the leading edge of a style called Ambient Americana. It's a sound passed down through Brian Eno's "Apollo," Bruce Kaphan's "Slider" and Moodswings' "Horizontal." Led by guitarist Henry Frayne, Lanterna has just enough twang and tremolo to give their music a big sky country feel. But it's a country tinged by atmosphere, bathed in reverb and refracting crimson dusks through echo delays. Frayne first came to our attention with the Midwest-based ethereal rock band Area. He's released several albums with Lanterna and Highways is the latest stop along the road.The album swings from floating ambient guitarscapes like "Clear Blue" with its layered spiderweb of delayed guitars, to more energized, but still chilled, groove works like "Brightness." Lanterna recalls the days of great guitar and surf bands like The Ventures, the Chantays and Dick Dale, but brought into a more contemporary and ambient world that has more to do with hypnotic moods than hemi-charged grooves. Lanterna is a breath of fresh ambient air, blown in from the midwestern plains. And the perfect Echoes CD of the month to bring in Spring.©2004 John Diliberto

(Feb04)

Moya Brennan
Two Horizons

From the first sonorous chorale cascade, it's obvious this is the voice of Moya (formerly spelled "Maire") Brennan. She was the sound of Clannad, the Irish band that paved the way for the new Celtic music of the 1980s and 90s. Now on her own, Brennan continues with a personalized music, neither Celtic nor New Age, rock nor folk.Two Horizons is a symphony of the voice as Brennan articulates a tale of spiritual journey mixed with Irish mythology centered around the harp, the instrument she's played since she was a child. While Moya's previous two CDs explored her Christian rebirth, Two Horizons takes a step back with a more open and welcoming view of spirituality. Two Horizons plays like an extended hymn, a celestial chorale punctuated by Moya's rippling Irish harp melodies, the pulse of bodhran drums, and just enough electronica synth pads and grooves to take this into chilled meditation territory. But atop it all is the voice of Moya Brennan, stacked in choirs, singing plaintively of lost paths and personal redemption. Clannad's "Theme from Harry's Game" was the template for Enya's sound and Moya returns to it in full force on this CD, which is produced by Ross Collum, who has worked with Enya.

(Jan04)

Suzanne Teng and Mystic Journey
Miles Beyond

After several years' wait, flute player Suzanne Teng returns with a follow up to her imposing 1999 solo debut, Mystic Journey. Miles Beyond picks up on the global rhythms and world flutes that made her debut so compelling. The core of the album is Teng and percussionist Gilbert Levy, playing flutes and hand drums from India, Africa, Egypt and Persia. Their melodies and rhythms spiral off each other in desert arabesques. Miles Beyond is a meticulously composed and arranged work with oud, string bass, keyboards and guitar fleshing out the sound in a music that uses traditional sounds for a new, pan-global music. Whether playing ocarina, Turkish ney, Indian bamboo flutes or the Balinese suling, Teng is a master of pulling melodies out of the air and bending them in sensual, calligraphic designs. Miles Beyond is an auspicious first CD of the Month for 2004.

(Dec03)

A Windham Hill Christmas 2
Various Artists

First I must offer a disclaimer: I was paid to write the liner notes for A Windham Hill Christmas 2. It was not a task I took on lightly, since I'm not a lover of Christmas carols, those tired chestnuts trotted out ad infinitum in torturously tiresome rote renditions. That's one reason I'd always been a fan of Windham Hill's Winter Solstice series which leaves the tried and true carols behind for more evocative fare. We get dozens of Christmas albums sent to Echoes each year and my eyes glaze over just looking at the track listings with the same "In Dulci Jubilo-Joy To the World-Silent Night-God Rest ye Merry Gentlemen" songs. Those very tunes are the first three tracks on A Windham Hill Christmas 2. Yet, something here is different. A Windham Hill Christmas won me over with their first release last year and this year's edition is even better. Artists like Philip Aaberg, Alex de Grassi and Barbara Higbie find a different spirit in these tired carols, opening up new spaces, exploring the silence between the notes like the calm of freshly fallen snow. There's an air of classical chamber music with a Renaissance tone in many of these renditions, especially from oboist Paul McCandless and pianist Barbara Higbie who also plays harp and fiddle on "Patapan."Guitarists Will Ackerman and David Cullen pair up on a haunting version of "I Wonder As I Wander" that hangs like a glass sculpture suspended in the frozen air. Tracy Silverman and Thea Suits offer a shimmering, modernist spin on "Away in A Manger," while Jeff Johnson and Brian Dunning lend a Celtic influence to "The Waits Song." A Windham Hill Christmas 2 is a seasonal CD you can play when the folks are visiting, and even after they leave.

Bridges: The Echoes Living Room Concerts Volume 9

Each month on Echoes, we labor over selecting the month's best new CD, seeking the absolute best. Every month but October that is. That's when we put out our annual Echoes Living Room Concert Disc, which is inevitably the best disc that month because it draws form the best live performances heard on Echoes in the last year or so. Bridges: The Echoes Living Room Concerts Volume 9 is no exception.We called it Bridges because it represents a music that crosses between countries and time, ancient music and modern technology, cultures from Asia and Africa to Native America. There are voices singing in ancient Aramaic and musicians mixing eastern and western modalities. The disc is bookended by the extremes of the Echoes soundscape, beginning with a solo acoustic guitar performance by the legendary Pat Metheny and ending with a classic synthesizer excursion from Redshift. In between is a web of world fusions and electro-acoustic formulations that are distinctly a product of a modern, trans-global landscape. It's modern, even when it's ancient. That's the case with two selections from the heart of Texas. The eight singers of SAVAE, the San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble, sing in Aramaic and Hebrew in their living room, playing instruments from well before the turn of the last millennium. Up the road in Austin, we caught the Mundi Ensemble, a group that plays Medieaval compositions and originals in that mode, but with a distinctly modern, minimalist spin and a hint of Duane Eddy guitar.East-West sounds abound on Bridges. Michael Mandrell and Benjy Wertheimer offer a sublime meditation for acoustic guitar and Indian esraj while Drala forges a global fusion of bansuri flute, tabla drums, guitar and bass. But some fusions go American West to Middle east. That's the case with Autumn's Child who brings the Native American flute of Mark Holland into a global chamber music setting. Several artists articulate forward looking designs. Guitarist Michael Hewett processes his acoustic guitar into an electric chamber music and Norway's Erik Wøllo, in an unreleased work, creates an electronic fantasy for guitar and synthesizer. An Echoes LRC disc wouldn't be complete without some solo guitar and piano. Bridges has both with Michael Gulezian's open-plains slide guitar on "Tumbledweeb." Pianist Barbara Higbie's piano solo cascades in liquid glass fragments on "True Story."Bridges contains the essence of Echoes, distilled into 11 live performances, sequenced into an Echoes soundscape.

more info and sound clips here>>

Patrick O'Hearn
Beautiful World

Patrick O'Hearn has not only been a mainstay of Echoes from the very first day, he's been a defining component of the Echoes sound. Nowhere is that better heard than his latest CD, Beautiful World. Despite that positive title, Patrick O'Hearn's beautiful world isn't all light and sunshine. His work is full of churning undergrowth, shadowed corners and sultry, shrouded days. He's joined once again by longtime cohort, guitarist Peter Maunu. Together they conjure up Ennio Morricone dipped in an ambient bath on tracks like "Magnificent River." The influence of O'Hearn's work with Steve Roach is heard on the electro-rhythms of some tracks, while others take a page from Erik Satie, with their spare, but haunting use of melody. O'Hearn's sonic pallette remains among the most distinctive in modern music and his roots as a bass player anchor these evocative works in an organic firmament. It is a Beautiful World. - John Diliberto

©2003 John Diliberto
more information about Patrick O'Hearn at his website>>

Kitaro
The Sacred Journey of Ku-Kai

On September 11, 2001, Japanese composer Kitaro was grounded in Hawaii for several days while on his way to Japan. The Sacred Journey of Ku-Kai album was begun during those days of isolation, when no planes were flying. As a sound of peace cast into the world, Kitaro began making the traditional pilgrimage to the island of Shikoku which has 88 temples, each with its own temple bells. Kitaro is in the process of recording those bells and sampling them into a new extended series of works, of which the Sacred Journey of Ku-Kai is the first. It's also the best Kitaro album in years.Only occasionally slipping into the over-wrought arrangements that have marred his recent work, Kitaro returns to many of his classic sounds: the Korg synthesizer whoop, electric sitar, and sample-and-hold star patterns. He sets them in new, meditative terrain, highlighted by native and silver flute and the huquin, a Chinese violin.The Sacred Journey of Ku-Kai is an intricately wrought and often exhilarating work. In this month of memories of 9-11, it's the perfect choice for the Echoes CD of the month.

Tim Story & Hans-Joachim Roedelius
Lunz

Lunz is a lake in Austria, but it might as well be a lake of the imagination as Tim Story and Hans-Joachim Roedelius create a haunting soundscape of refined elegance and introspective moods that take a subtle shift to the left of reality.Tim Story needs no introduction for Echoes listeners. We coined the term "ambient chamber music" to describe his sensual liquid sound that merges classical influences along with electronic ambiences and a gift for melody that would leave Erik Satie crying.Hans-Joachim Roedelius is one of Tim's mentors. A founding member of the German electronic duo Cluster (then called Kluster) in 1970, he's gone on to release dozens of recordings ranging from pure ambient to classical works. Roedelius and Story have been working together for a few years, and finally they've released an album together called Lunz. Its melodies linger like the aftermath of a dream, both familiar and strange, painted in water-color textures that make each melody shimmer like quicksilver.

One Alternative
Pendulum

One Alternative has been a fixture on Echoes since we debuted in 1989, and at that point they'd already been around for six years. On their latest CD, they continue to hone their acoustic chamber fusion sound, weaving two acoustic guitars along with oboe/English horn. One Alternative swings on rhythms that phase seamlessly from classical to jazz, draped across the intricate finger-picking of their guitars and Jill Haley's refined, lyrical oboe.

As on past One Alternative albums, Jill Haley and Mark Oppenlander split writing credits, with Jill tending towards more pastoral pieces like "Risa's Dance" while Oppenlander shows his penchant for Beatlesque voicings, on tracks like "Dana." One Alternative shares a lineage with artists like Tingstad & Rumbel, both emerging from a love of the band Oregon. But to my ears, One Alternative has a more lively, rhythmic flexibility that reveals itself in showpieces like Haley's "Zing" and Oppenlander's title piece. In the interest of full disclosure, I should reveal that Echoes producer Jeff Towne was the engineer for this recording.

June 2003

Lisa Lynne
HOPES & DREAMS

Lisa Lynne returns to form on her new CD, HOPES & DREAMS. After a flirtation with Middle Eastern music on her lovely Maiden's Prayer, the Celtic harpist returns to the Renaissance airs and Celtic themes that have made her one of the most loved of Echoes‚ artists. Hopes & Dreams is full of gentle, chamber folk arrangements with cello, guitar and the bamboo flutes, whistles and recorders of her longtime partner, George Tortorelli. Lynne has been conducting harp workshops at City of Hope, a cancer research and treatment center near Los Angeles, and her work there has clearly influenced the soothing mood and hopeful tone of her music. Tracks like "Earth & Sky" emerge from a sunrise of the imagination, wistful and yearning while "Circle the Sun" is a haunting chamber work, Lynne's harp woven with country-inflected acoustic guitar and swirling almost pedal-steel like electric guitar. Hopes & Dreams isn't an album on the edge. It's an album that smooths the edges.

©2003 John Diliberto