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	Various Artists A Winter's Solstice: Silver Anniversary Edition Will Ackerman created the Winter's Solstice series because he'd heard "Jingle Bells" too many times. A Winter's Solstice, born in 1985, was his antidote: original music, obscure carols and classical themes that reflected the mood and ambience of the winter season. And it worked. Since that first Windham Hill Winter's Solstice album, the concept has gone through some changes, bottoming out in 1999's abysmally kitsch Winter Solstice on Ice. With this Silver Anniversary Edition, Dawn Atkinson, who produced the first Winter's Solstice disc, has gone back to the original concept of non-traditional seasonal music and novel arrangements of Christmas classics. She's also brought in some old stand-bys, soliciting works from Paul McCandless, Barbara Higbie, Will Ackerman, Philip Aaberg and Liz Story. Much of this all-new Winter's Solstice turns on classical themes. Ex-Kronos Quartet cellist Joan Jeanrenaud teams up with guitarist Steve Erquiaga on an airy Handel piece and Paul McCandles adapts Orlando Gibbons' "The Silver Swan." Others explore traditional carols, including Erquiaga's double guitar filigree on "Greensleeves." But as in Winter Solstice discs past, the best compositions are usually the originals. Keyboardist Tim Story, a Winter's Solstice stalwart, unfolds another gorgeously melodic ambient chamber piece called "What Comes December." Tracy Silverman and Thea Suits turn in a wistful duet for electric violin and flute, and TV composer W.G. Snuffy Walden goes soft focus on "Moon Lake." While "Beneath the Trees" by Ackerman and Aaberg, seems born in the snow covered trees of Ackerman's Vermont home, Hawaiian Ozzie Kotani's slack key "Queen's Prayer" seems to have nothing to do with the season. Yet, it somehow fits the mood. ©2001 John Diliberto
	David Darling Cello Blue David Darling, along with Tim Story is one of the principal architects of ambient chamber music. If you don't know what that is, a quick listen to Darling's new CD will tell you. Playing acoustic and 5-string electric cello, Darling orchestrates slow, elegiac largos, dotted with brush strokes of synthesizer, colored with drops of acoustic piano and enfolded in environmental sounds. This is a follow-up album to his 1993 release, Eight-String Religion and as on that CD, Darling orchestrates a symphony of melancholy and yearning, recalling the mood of Barber's "Adagio for Strings" or Hans Zimmer's "Journey to the Line." Layering pizzicato cello against languid bowed lines, Darling creates enveloping soundscapes that are only occasionally short-changed by pedestrian synthesizer programming. The title track is a serene lullaby while "Morning" offers a delicate pastoral expanse. Darling is an artist who knows the difference between serenity and shlock and he's always on the correct side of that divide. ©2001 John Diliberto
Bang on a Can: TERRY RILEY-IN C Steve Reich: Triple Quartet/Music for a Large Ensemble/Electric Guitar Phase	Steve Reich: Triple Quartet Bang on a Can: Terry Riley--In C These two CDs aren't issued as a pair, but the timing of their coincidental releases couldn't be better. Steve Reich and Terry Riley, along with Philip Glass and LaMonte Young were the shock troops of early minimalism, bringing it out from the avant-garde and into something approaching the mainstream, influencing everyone from Tangerine Dream to The Who. These two albums each feature new recordings of seminal works by Reich and Riley and it's remarkable how powerful they remain after 35 years. Steve Reich's TRIPLE QUARTET features three early works, notably his 1967 composition, "Violin Phase," resurrected here as "Electric Guitar Phase." Using a limited number of melodic phrases repeated and thrown in and out of sync over the course of four overdubs, guitarist Dominic Frasca discovers a world of melody and rhythm, constantly cycling in elliptical orbits. Likewise, Reich's 1977 "Music for a Large Ensemble" is a luminous work. Drawn from the same era as "Music for 18 Musicians," it's given a new performance by Alarm Will Sound and Ossia with a slightly different arrangement by conductor Alan Pierson. "Triple Quartet," from 1999, is given its recording premiere here. With the Kronos Quartet layered three times over, it harkens back to works like "Violin Phase" but Reich's writing is now more melodically extravagant, with siren calls, shifting textures and skewed counterpoints. It's a hypnotic piece. Which brings us to Terry Riley's "In C", the first real manifesto of minimalism. In 1964, Riley composed a series of melodic cells that could be played by any combination of musicians. Locked into a rhythm of a steady pulse pounded in two Cs, an octave apart, each musician could play a cell as long as they wanted, then move onto the next. The genius of Riley's work is how coherent and inexorable it sounds while at the same time throwing up an infinite amount of variations each time it's played. "In C" is performed here by Bang On A Can. You might recall the way they transformed Brian Eno's "Music for Airports" a few years ago. With instrumentation that includes strings, tuned percussion, electric guitar, reeds and the Chinese pipa of Wu Man, Bang on A Can charts a delirious course through "In C," sometimes spinning in concentric orbits, at other times alighting on the same phrase in regimented lockstep before slowly fracturing away. Nearly four decades after Terry Riley originally conceived it,"In C" remains, as one critic said, the first masterpiece of the global village. ©2001 John Diliberto
	Erik Wollo Wind Journey Erik Wollo is a relatively unheralded musician, yet he's been an integral part of the Echoes soundscape for years, going back to his album TRACES in the late 1980s, to SOLSTICE in the mid-90s to last year’s GUITAR NOVA. GUITAR NOVA focused on his acoustic guitar work as he multi-tracked guitars in atmospheric, ringing string orchestras. On his new CD, WIND JOURNEY, he plugs back in, firing up his synthesizers again and dropping in electric guitar solos that sound like they swept in from the stars. Each piece on Wind Journey is a cinematic trip, often powered by insistent sequencer lines, elaborate synthesizer orchestrations and topped off with some of the most cutting guitar lines this side of Mike Oldfield. Although Wollo records his music in a basement studio in Frederikstad, his compositions are more evocative of Norway's sweeping, jagged mountain ranges and vast coastal fjords. I know that's a cliché, but Wollo's music is anything but. This is an album you'll be hearing on Echoes for months to come. ©2001 John Diliberto
	Paul Ellis Into the Liquid Unknown The sound of German electronic space music from the 70s has held a powerful sway over any musician twisting knobs on a synthesizer. A quarter century after Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze codified their sound, people are still making music like they stepped into a Berlin time warp. And it's not surprising. The sound of rolling sequencer patterns, swirling effects and laser burst melodies still sounds fresh. To put on Phaedra or Body Love is to be transported once again. Paul Ellis is one of many who were mesmerized by that sound, as evidenced by his group, Dweller at the Threshold. But with his second solo album, he's finally breaking away, making a music that, while still reflecting his roots, moves into a space that hasn’t been trampled. INTO THE LIQUID UNKNOWN is built around analog synthesizer sounds and interlocking sequencer patterns that build into maze-like designs. He drops the simple 4/4 rhythm, plodding drum machine patterns and smothering synthesizer string pads that plague most post-70s space musicians. Instead, his lines are clearly etched into black space, rhythms are suggested more than played, with melodic lines squeezing through delays and filters, morphing in endlessly fascinating timbres. ©John Diliberto 2001
	Brian Eno and J. Peter Schwalm Drawn from Life It's been quite some time since Brian Eno, the first of Ten Artists for Ten years of Echoes, has put out a truly satisfying album. DRAWN FROM LIFE remedies that situation with a quintessential ambient recording that pushes in new directions. Of late, Eno's music has been abstract. He's put out limited edition releases of his installation soundtracks that have less form than cirrus clouds and his last proper ambient album, THE DROP in 1997. I described in it one review as "metallic synthesized and sampled sounds etching out skeletal rhythms and melodies that are as thready the pulse of a heart transplant candidate." Eno was working with a self-composing program called Koan at the time and the melodic non-sequiturs coupled with his flat, metallic choice of timbres, seemed lifeless. Along comes German drummer and composer J. Peter Schwalm and suddenly, there's a shape and texture to ambiences that invite, entice and mystify. Eno has long been a fan of early Miles Davis BITCHES BREW-era fusion and you can hear that influence in a free interplay of sonic textures, solo fragments and those haunting melodies that Eno conjures. It's a cyber-noir sound, with an atmosphere of black and white cityscapes shot through a misty haze at night. On "Like Pictures Part Two" Laurie Anderson intones some oblique lyrics like "Some things are just pictures. They're scenes before your eyes." Drawn from Life has plenty of pictures for the minds eye. © 2001 John Diliberto
	Peter Kater and R. Carlos Nakai THROUGH WINDOWS AND WALLS R. Carlos Nakai is beginning to reach a saturation point with three new albums so far in 2001. But this third CD, "Through Windows and Walls," finds him in one of his most advantageous positions, working with keyboardist Peter Kater. Each musician seems to bring out the strengths and shore up the weaknesses of the other. For Nakai, that means his melodies become crisper, more clearly delineated and couched in a sonic environment that seems custom designed, and meticulously wrought. On the other hand, Nakai's direct spirit and austere approach tone down Kater's tendency towards overly sentimentalized melodies and orchestrations. Like earlier Kater and Nakai albums, this speaks to a native chamber sound. It's slightly more classical and less world­oriented than on Nakai's "In a Distant Place" CD, although percussionists Geoffrey Gordon and Michael Moses Tisch lay down percolating percussive bed on several tracks. While Nakai on his own tends to vamp, Kater gives his melodies dramatic structure like the long crescendo of "When Worlds Collide" and the cinematic turns of "Walk With Me." © 2001 John Diliberto
	Afro Celt Sound System Volume 3: Further in Time Afro Celt Sound System returns with their third CD and continues to fulfill the prophecy of their name. Just like previous albums, FURTHER IN TIME features a synchro-mesh of Irish, African and electronica rhythms locked into dervish grooves that could go on forever. On top is a weave of ecstatic soloing from uilleann pipes, Irish whistles and fiddles, and African koras. "Colossus" is the groove masterwork of the album, while the two-part composition, "North" reaches cinematic expanses. But some of Afro Celt's most yearning music exists here as well, including N'Faly Kouyate's album-closing "Onward" and Iarla O'Lionard's keening "Lagan." Afro Celt takes a few chances on FURTHER IN TIME. Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant turns in a classic performance that could have fit right on Zep's fourth album. With its heroic refrain, pastoral, English 12-string acoustic guitar and the additional voice of Welsh singer Julie Murphy, it echoes Led Zeppelin's "Battle of Evermore." Likewise, Peter Gabriel sings the lead vocal on "When You're Falling," an Afro-pop style piece that would have seemed light on a Gabriel CD, let alone an Afro Celt disc. Neither one is a bad song, they're just not Afro Celt songs. But they don't hold back an album that otherwise refines Afro Celt Sound System's euphoric, often hallucinatory whirl. It sends you plummeting on a roller-coaster of delerious rhythms and instrumental cross-cutting that leaves you spinning. © 2001 John Diliberto
	Green Isac GROUNDRUSH It's been much too long between albums for Green Isac, about five years. And I've actually held off making it an Echoes pick, because its charms are subtle and work their ways over time. But their latest CD, Groundrush, reminds me why they've been one of our favorite groups on Echoes over the years. Green Isac is a Norwegian duo working ethno-techno strategies with a sly humor and grace worthy of Brian Eno from his Another Green World days. As they have on previous albums, Green Isac mixes ethnic instruments like the Chinese yang ch'in, African djembe and Indian Bansuri flute. These are spun into kinetic rhythms, sometimes electronically powered, but more often acoustic, with accents from manipulated guitars, and quirky synths, setting them in alien landscapes. Green Isac takes the simplest melodies, from the repeated flute line of "Sufi Too" to the electric piano theme that emerges out of the echoed rhythms of "Mifune," and turns them into Pachebel-like canons. Groundrush has an air of mystery and intrigue, but Green Isac renders it with a twinkle in their eyes. © 2001 John Diliberto
	Jalan Jalan BALI DUA Jalan Jalan's first album BALI, was a Pick CD in 1999, and their second album, BALI DUA, is no less imposing, but in the quietest way possible. Orchestrated once again by Yasufumi Yamashita, from the group Sorma, Jalan Jalan mixes instruments, melodies and rhythms drawn from Bali's gamelan orchestras and insinuates them into synthesizer ambiences that have the calming presence of slow breathing. BALI DUA is more lush than its predecessor. On "Sekar," a gentle guitar cycle frames the gamelan themes, while on "Kaja," an unnamed Balinese singer intones a folk melody of vibrato-laden melismas over a slow motion dance of synthesizers and gamelan. Like Pachebel's "Canon" and Brian Eno's "An Ending (Ascent)," Jalan Jalan's compositions seem to move towards some infinite point, with melodies spiraling in minor key refrains. And as on their first album, that point only moves deeper with each listening. © 2001 John Diliberto
	Patrick O'Hearn SO FLOWS THE CURRENT After four years, keyboardist and composer Patrick O'Hearn finally returns with a new CD. It's not a departure from the music he's been recording since INDIGO nearly ten years ago, yet it's another perfection of that sound. Patrick remains a master of mood, conjuring atmospheres that tug on the consciousness like a half remembered dream. But there's a more organic feel to SO FLOWS THE CURRENT than in past O'Hearn albums. He said they used no MIDI or sequencing on the album and I believe it. Although O'Hearn's music has never sounded wooden, the textures here roll more naturally, the nuances of performance are a bit more telling. And then there's the guitar of Peter Maunu. His mostly acoustic strings are a warm sound in the grey field of O'Hearn's arrangements. Maunu explodes into "Northwest Passage" with rippling arpeggios over a snake-bitten desert groove that recalls Steve Roach's DUST TO DUST. "Traveler's Rest" also has a western sensibility from Maunu's guitar, which might be why its original title was "Cheyenne." The classic O'Hearn sound can be heard on the ominous moods of "Panning the Sands," with its mix of percussive accents and metallic electro-string plucks. SO FLOWS THE CURRENT isn't the step forward that Patrick O'Hearn needs to make, but it's so lush and enveloping, you don't mind if he stays here a while longer. © John Diliberto 2001
	Bruce Kaphan "Slider" I can already tell you what one of the Echoes Top Ten albums of 2001 will be. It's the solo debut of Bruce Kaphan (pronounced Kap-in). He's a veteran of the San Francisco music scene, a member of the American Music Club, sideman to artists like R.E.M and David Byrne, none of that prepares you for this journey into ambient pedal steel guitar. Kaphan takes all the beauty of this country & western icon, the plaintive wail, the human vocal quality, the uncanny pitch shifts, surgically removes the country corn, and sends it across southwestern landscapes and out into space. Songs like "High Desert" ring with pure country air and joy, while"Country & Eastern" and "Back in the Light" ride on Indian tabla drums, as the pedal steel emulates the sitars sinewy call. And on "Clouds" and "Outpost," Kaphan finds an entirely new language with these melodically rich, enveloping soundscapes. Robert Rich has approached this sound with his simple lap steel guitar, and BJ Cole gave broad pointers in this direction, but Bruce Kaphan has nailed it with a subtlety and precision that few will equal. Expect to hear this album a lot on Echoes over the next few months. © John Diliberto 2001
	Ronu Majumdar HOLLOW BAMBOO A couple of years ago, trumpeter Jon Hassell put out one of our favorite albums on Echoes, FASCINOMA. The band for that CD included Ry Cooder on electric guitar and Indian bansuri flute player Ronu Majumdar. Apparently, the FASCINOMA sessions went so well, they all stuck around to play on Majumdar's solo album. The results are HOLLOW BAMBOO. Not nearly as hallucinatory as FASCINOMA, Majumdar engages Hassell and Cooder in raga variations, creating interior improvisations and muted ecstatic flights. Cooder plays his electric guitar with a heavy tremolo,like the sound of another world breaking thru at the periphery while Hassell's breathy slurred trumpet echoes Majumdar's spiraling flute lines. The album also moves through more traditionally inclined ragas with just Majumdar and tabla. Majumdar spins out swirls of melody, extending them on a time line that seems like it could go on forever. To hear Majumdar in a more traditional raga setting, a companion disc called LADY ASTRIDE THE TIGER has also been released. © John Diliberto 2001
	Eri Sugai MAI One-woman vocal choirs are everywhere, from Adiemus to Enya, but Eri Sugai has created one of the least affected and serenely entrancing chorales of recent memory. A Japanese singer who has spent most of her time in the commercial jingle and pop music worlds, MAI, is a declaration of her voice as an instrument. Like many contemporary female exotic singers, she works up her own language, a haunting melange of Asian-tinged phonemes that she casts into a morphing global choir. The opening gothic hymn of "Horizon" sounds like a flock of descending angels, while "Honen Bushi" takes a traditional Okinawan folk song and turns it into a tribal chant. "Aqua" was actually a commercial soundtrack in Japan and Sugai's South African style vocalese on it recalls Adiemus's " Adiemus", which also began life as a commercial. Sugai, who composed and arranged all the music, sparingly decorates her brush stroked compositions with traditional Japanese instruments and keyboards. She reputedly created hundreds of vocal overdubs on any given song, yet, unlike some more popular singers in this genre, she never loses the detail of her melodies, nor the distinct layers of her lush harmonies. © John Diliberto 2001
	Zero One PROTOTYPE2 If you need to up the BPMs of the usual Echoes soundscape, strap yourself in for the second album by Zero One, a.k.a. Kevin Dooley. From his San Bruno, California studio, Zero One orchestrates ambient excursions of a decidedly electronic nature. From the opening "Possibilities," Zero One establishes his sonic terrain with a repeated spoken refrain, "Your life is going to be different now." Zero One recalls Dogon, with his sense of playfulness, using vocal sound snippets as signposts in usually surreal sound designs. Take, for instance, "Two." Subtitled "oogie-eeha," that phrase is a hypnotic refrain, popping up, like a virtual Energizer bunny, in the oddest, yet perfectly timed moments. Zero One uses these effects to delineate his other world of sound, full of trancey beats and shifting textures. Whenever those spoken fragments arrive, it's like a window briefly opened up back into the real world, but Zero One makes sure you won't want to leave the one he created. PROTOTYPE2 is sure to be featured this year on Echoes Techno-Tribal New Year's Eve show. © John Diliberto 2000
	Erik Wollo GUITAR NOVA Guitar Nova is pretty much all guitar, but the title doesn't quite do justice to the evocative, beautifully played and subtly woven themes Erik Wollo has created. We know Wollo for his sweeping synthesizer orchestrations on albums like Solstice and Images of Light, but even those CDs largely began on the fingers of his guitar synthesizer. On this CD, however, he keeps it acoustic with layers acoustic guitars along with balalaika and kora, creating a sound that seems to ring off the mountainous landscapes of Norway where Wollo lives. He brings a laconic Ry Cooder-like slide guitar to "Rainbows" and a bell-like minimalism to "Hildring." Although acoustic, Wollo's compositions and production style still suggest the same open spaces of his electronic works, but here the melodies are etched in crystalline cold air. We've had this album for a couple of years on Echoes as an import. Now it's widely available in America for the first time on the Spotted Peccary label. © John Diliberto 2000
	R. Carlos Nakai/William Eaton/Will Clipman/Nawang Khechog IN A DISTANT PLACE R. Carlos Nakai has a knack of elevating the musicians around him to a new level. But in the case of this collaboration, they are already on the summit with him. Speaking of summits, this is the second pairing of the Native American flutist Nakai and Tibetan flutist Nawang Khechog. "In a Distant Place" articulates a world between cultures. Nakai and Khechog's flutes intertwine and morph through each other in these lyrical pieces, embraced by the string orchestrations of William Eaton. He weaves a blend of his hybrid guitars including harp guitar, lyre and spiral clef guitar. Don't ask. Just listen to the lattice work he provides for Nawang and R.C. Rounding out the group is longtime Nakai collaborator, Will Clipman, playing ethno-grooves and percussion colors. © John Diliberto 2000
	Preston Reed HANDWRITTEN NOTES Preston Reed used to be mentioned in the same breath as Leo Kottke and Michael Hedges, and deservedly so. He's fallen a bit out of view in recent years, but this new CD reveals what all the excitement was about. In fact, HANDWRITTEN NOTES makes a good argument for being "the" solo guitar album of the new millennium thus far. Preston uses many of the same two-handed techniques employed by Michael Hedges. He taps on the fretboard with both hands, giving him a pianistic range. It also gives him a wider dynamic scope and a percussive edge when he needs it. But while his technique will leave any acoustic guitar player staring slack-jawed, Preston also writes some gorgeous songs to take advantage of this extended range. "Shinkansen", named for the Japanese bullet trains, lives up to its title with rapid fire delivery, but he also turns symphonic on "Crossing Open Water" with some breathtaking dynamic shifts, coloristic effects and a gorgeous theme. This album should re-establish Preston Reed as one of our pre-eminent string benders. If you get one acoustic guitar album this year, Handwritten Notes is the one. © John Diliberto 2000
	The Echoes Living Room Concerts Volume 6 This CD features: Jeff Pearce Suzanne Teng Mizuyo Komiya William Coulter/Barry Phillips Michael Brook/Djivan Gasparyan Mark Hunton Michael Mandrell Rasa Jocelyn Montgomery Coyote Oldman Tim Story/Roedelius Preston Reed William Watson Click here for details, and ordering information.
	Harold Budd THE ROOM Harold Budd doesn't like to call his music ambient, even though his album PLATEAUX OF MIRROR was #2 in Brian Eno's Ambient Music Series in the1970s. And his new album, thankfully, will do little to remove that tag. THE ROOM is a return to form for Budd, recalling the suspended piano tones of PLATEAUX as well as the icy atmospheres of his late 1980 album, THE WHITE ARCADES. In fact, the album is based on a piece called "The Room" from THE WHITE ARCADES recording. Budd explores the most sublime melancholy on THE ROOM, with piano melodies hanging like moss gardens over ghostly organ drones and reverbs. Every melody is fecund with shadows, hidden glances and hazy memories. Many musicians have adopted Budd's sound and most of them pale in comparison once the master starts ruminating. © John Diliberto 2000
	Stephan Micus THE GARDEN OF MIRRORS I still remember the first Stephan Micus album, ARCHAIC CONCERTS, in 1976. With its rababs, angklungs and shakuhachis, that album was like a relic from an ancient civilization, only the civilization was all in Stephan Micus's head. The German musician has released several albums since then, each one exploring a world that draws on ancient forms and sounds without being directly related to them. His latest is THE GARDEN OF MIRRORS and it may be his most soulful album yet. On some tracks, he layers his voice 20 times making him sound like a Georgian choir. On others he creates orchestras of the imagination with percussion, steel drums, bowed sinding, shakuhachi flutes, ney flutes and tin whistles. Both melodic and textural, ambient and acoustic, THE GARDEN OF MIRRORS continues Stephan Micus's tradition of creating new and exotic interior landscapes. © John Diliberto 2000
	Sounds from the Ground TERRA FIRMA This isn't a quintessential Echoes album since it tends to be a bit heavier on the dance beats than the usual Echoes soundscape, but it's one of the best ambient albums of the year. Sounds from the Ground is a British electronic duo. Recalling William Orbit's Strange Cargo, Sounds from the Ground outline their abstract journey's with melodies etched in stained glass. Minimalism meets dub on the tropical cycles of "Bodega Bay," while "Drugstore" marches to a groove of doom, a piece of resigned heroism. "Rye," one of the tracks we are playing on Echoes, traverses a dark, voodoo trance vamp laced with Terry Riley-like organ cycles. Rhythmically propulsive without being overbearing, SFTG creates a space you want to stay in for a while. © John Diliberto 2000
	Axiom of Choice Niya Yesh Their name is unwieldy and its reference obscure, but the music of Axiom of Choice is an elegantly woven fusion of Persian melodies, Indian atmospheres and exotic vocals that heads directly to the primal soul. Their previous album is several years old now, but one track from it, "Valeh", still resonates with listeners. That's the moodier, more atmospheric side they explore on "Niya Yesh." On this CD, Axiom of Choice mixes Ramin Torkian's quarter-tone flamenco/Persian guitar style with ambiences from India, percussion from the middle east and the darkly alluring voice of Mamek Khadem from Iran. Singing in Persian and with wordless vocals, her voice laces many of these songs with a dark mystery. She's surrounded by tambouras, cellos, frame drums, kamancheh (spike fiddle), Buddhist chants and ney flutes creating a global chamber music sound. Vas's Greg Ellis co-produced the album and plays percussion. Axiom of Choice shares a lineage with Vas and Dead Can Dance and a future in the global music bazaar. © John Diliberto 2000
	Rasa Devotion Rasa is cellist Hans Christian, a longtime Echoes favorite, and singer Kim Waters. They've combined for a breathtaking, contemplative album of Indian chants and hymns, arranged for synthesizers, percussion and a textural maze of cello, sarangi, nyckleharpe and more. It's all topped off by the voice of Kim Waters. Her tone is serene and ethereal, an angelic voice that wraps around these melodies like a warm and inviting blanket. © John Diliberto 2000
	Jeff Pearce To the Shores of Heaven There aren't many artists working with the sonic purity of Jeff Pearce. After five solo albums, he's still recording with just electric guitar, albeit an electric guitar run through a lot of electronic processing, loops and over-dubs. Even the percussion on the quietly tribal "Doubt on Dark Waters" is from a guitar. On "To the Shores of Heaven" Jeff continues his quietly ecstatic sound, full of shimmering guitar textures and delicately plucked melodies refracted through loops and delays. Jeff gets an orchestra of sound from his guitar, with layered swells, gentle pizzicatos and soaring sustains. On pieces like "Sudden Light" he reaches the kind of of majestic contemplation that hasn't been heard since Robert Fripp's early Frippertronics. Fripp is an obvious touchstone for Jeff, but he doesn't have the need to flash his virtuosity, letting the compositions and mood dictate his sound. "To the Shores of Heaven" finds Jeff Pearce still pointed in the right direction. © John Diliberto 2000
	Joanne Shenandoah Peacemaker's Journey When Joanne Shenandoah's first album came out, Echoes' host John Diliberto dubbed her the "Native American Enya". But this Iroquois singer has evolved beyond that, and this may be her most impressive album yet. Produced by Tom Wasinger, he surrounds her with subtle instrumentation, gentle percussion, lilting guitar accents, subtle synthesziers, outlining a landscape against which Joanne casts her songs of the Iroquois peoples. Joanne's voice is a silken smooth instrument that draws you into her songs, even if you don't understand the language. © John Diliberto 2000
	Love Spirals Downward Temporal Love Spirals Downward shares a psychedelic code with the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and a musical code with groups like the Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance. Guitarist Ryan Lum creates a lush, ambient style of rock that surrounds the swirling arabesque of Suzanne Perry's wordless vocals. Like Elizabeth Frazer and Lisa Gerrard, Perry usually sings in a dialect of the imagination, yet one that it serenely intimate and seductive. This anthology takes some of their best tracks from the albums, Ever, Idylls,Ardor and Flux as well as a few pieces from obscure collections. Suzanne Perry calls out like an angel in a land of ruin on the lacy reverb of "Kykeon" and "Madras." Her lyrics are a textural puzzle, suggesting meaning and hidden intent like a hieroglyphic of the soul. Ryan Lum's layered, overtone-laden guitars echo her incantations. Moving back through time, this album starts with the electronica grooves of their last album Flux into the ethereal atmospheres of their 1992 album, Idylls. It ends with the heroic "Mediterrenea," from an old Projekt records collection. If you don't have any LSD albums, this is the place to start. © John Diliberto 2000
	Jalan Jalan Bali In Japan and China, they have a knack for churning modern instrumental music out as if it were off an assembly line. Artists are anonymous. Covers are generic, and usually, so is the music. A Japanese label called Pacific Moon seems to be breaking from that trend with a series of compelling albums, by artists who actually have identities, at least, they appear to. One of them is Jalan Jalan. On this CD, they use the sounds of Balinese gamelan, although the slow pacing and mellow tones are more akin to Javanese gamelan. Using the kind of understated minimalist sensibility that marks Brian Eno's ambient recordings, they weave gamelan sounds and scales amidst haunting, often simple keyboard melodies and atmospheres. It seems simple and even cliched at first, but every time I listen to this disc, or hear it on Echoes, I'm seduced by its subtle arrangements and the kind of melodies that, like Pachelbel's canon, seem like they could go on forever. © John Diliberto 2000
	Steve Roach Light Fantastic Steve Roach has spent most of the last decade pursuing a music that merged technology and primitivism, sending the sounds of didgeridoos, harmonicas and ocarinas, sticks, stones and bones into a landscape of effects-processing and synthesizer atmospheres. Using technology he brought us into a primeval sound. On his latest CD, Light Fantastic, Steve Roach returns to his synthesizers creating a music born from his techno-tribal rhythms but morphed into a Blade Runner urban landscape. Grooves shape-shift in a techno-zombie dance as modulating chords descend like cloud banks roiling out of a desert horizon. This isn't the Steve Roach of sequencer dervishes like Empetus, but neither is it the organic techno-tribal grooves of albums like Origins. Steve Roach takes a side-long glance at contemporary techno/ambient music, but finds his own vocabulary within it. © John Diliberto 2000
	Uakti Aguas da Amazonia A brilliant collaboration between composer Philip Glass and Uakti (pronounced wok-a-chee) who make Glass's minimalist cycles sound more organic and melodic than they have in years. Uakti is a Brazilian group headed up by Marco Antonio Guimaraes. Like the late-composer, Harry Partch, Guimaraes designs his own instruments, making tuned percussion out of PVC pipes, marimbas out of glass plates, and stringed instruments out of gourds. Uakti's music reflects the innocence of these instruments. Philip Glass composed this music for a ballet, and it's clear he had Uakti's unique instrumentation in mind. It's the sound of a lost and exotic world on another planet, thousands of years in the past, or 20 minutes into the future. © John Diliberto 2000
	Samite Stars to Share Samite is a Ugandan exile who fled the country after his brother was murdered during the dark days of Idi Amin's reign. He's been in the States for more than a decade and during that time, he's released a pair of quietly sublime albums on the Shanachie label and one on Xenophile. For Stars to Share, Samite made a return trip to Uganda and brought back a music of healing and restoration. Singing in his native Lugandan tongue, Samite's hymn-like melodies are surrounded by Windham Hill atmospherists. He plays his kalimba in melodic cross-rhythms with Michael Manring's electric bass on "Having A Good Time." An unusually restrained Patti Cathcart (from Tuck & Patti) provides a sultry response to Samite's healing pleas on "Bring Back the Music" while the title track is a heart-rending dirge with some gripping ethereal vocals by Happy Rhodes. Will Ackerman ripples gentle guitar arpeggios on the haunting ballad, "Old Man's Wisdom." Ackerman is also the uncredited producer of this album, giving Samite's music the kind of settings it deserves. There are many ways to respond to strife musically. You can make music that's violent and angry, that amplifies your frustration and despair, or you can make music that seeks a way out of despair. On this powerful album, Samite takes the latter route. © John Diliberto 2000
	Arvo Pärt Alina Alina is a perfect moment, a feather brush stroke of an album that luxuriates in open spaces. It's actually comprised of only two early Arvo Pärt works. "Spiegel im Spiegel" is a slowly evolving Escher-like melody that keeps folding back on itself in subtle variations. There are three versions here, two for piano and violin and one for piano and cello. Each of them could go on forever. "Für Alina" is pure ambient music. Recalling Brian Eno's, Music for Airports, its fragile melody seems to hang in the air, gently blown, never resolving. Arvo Pärt brings us, once again, into the spiritual depths of his Estonian soul. © John Diliberto 2000
	Various Artists A Celtic Christmas: Peace on Earth The Celtic craze finally seems to be trailing off, but don't let that make you look past the latest in the Celtic Christmas series from Windham Hill. This year, they've given the reigns over to Michael O'Domhnaill , the founder of The Bothy Band and Nightnoise. The stylistic center of the disc revolves around Michael and other Nightnoise members and that's a good thing. Michael is steeped in true Celtic traditions, but he's also a modernist so he surrounds these tunes with a lush, chamber music sound. Some of the best tunes include the traditional Irish carol, "The Flight into Egypt" as well as a haunting original, "No Room at the Inn." Nightnoise singer Triona Ni Dhomhnaill duets with her sister Maighread on the quavering harmonies of "Barbara Allen," while Micheal O'Domhnaill joins fiddler Paddy Glackin on "The Green Fields of Amerikay." Guitarist William Coulter , who did such an incredible job on our Sonic Seasonings concert last year, duets with guitarist Benjamin Verdery on "Flow Gently Sweet Afton" and Nightnoise flutist Brian Dunning joins Jeff Johnson on "Down the Chimney." There's something about that Celtic lilt, the sound of low whistles, cranky Uilleann pipes and Turlough O'Carolan tunes that instantly conjure up the warmth, quiet, and mysticism of Christmas. And it's all on A Celtic Christmas: Peace on Earth. © John Diliberto 2000

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