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PGM 1271 'RESONANT DARK' (David Darling Retrospective Pt.1) - jan.22-29

The hypnotic pizzicato rhythm; the patient exploration of contemplative space; the ardent lyricism and emotional depth of the virtual string orchestra — these are hallmarks of the music of cellist DAVID DARLING, who left us at the beginning of 2021 after a long and exemplary life in music. When HOS launched our nationally syndicated program in 1983, David Darling was featured in program number one, and was already one of our core artists.

Born in Indiana in 1941, he studied cello at Indiana State University, became the first cellist of the pioneering jazz/classical fusion ensemble THE WINTER CONSORT in 1970, and played principal cello in the Nashville Symphony. His 1980 solo debut on the respected German jazz label ECM began a twenty year creative relationship with producer MANFRED EICHER, and ten albums that set a standard for creative contemporary string recordings.

In a unique career that extended over 50 years, David Darling distinguished himself as much more than a contemporary musician. His work as a music educator, contributions to humanitarian projects, and collaborations with poets and spiritual teachers, set an example of a musical life devoted to service and inspiration.

In addition to his ECM recordings, Darling sought out collaborations from outside the world of contemporary jazz, resulting in many diverse and richly romantic recordings, which we'll cover in a second retrospective. On this transmission of Hearts of Space, the ECM recordings of DAVID DARLING, on a program called RESONANT DARK.

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PGM 1270 'WINTER FOG' : jan.15-22

The forlorn, hypnotic sound of foghorns echoing over San Francisco Bay, recorded in 1981 by the pioneering environmental sound artist BILL FONTANA. It's an artifact of a bygone era: the fog horns are still there, but as an aid to navigation they've mostly been replaced by GPS. Fortunately, Fontana's work has now been memorialized in a deluxe CD edition from the Bay area New Music label Other Minds Records. It makes a lovely souvenir of foggy, hypothermic summer nights in San Francisco.

As an atmospheric phenomenon, fog has been with us since the earth cooled enough for water vapor to condense into tiny droplets that float on air. For humans, fog reduces visibility and makes it difficult, even dangerous, to move around; on the plus side, fog creates subtle monochromatic dreamworlds of endless beauty and fascination for both visual artists and ambient musicians.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, chilled, soft-focus, atmospheric dreamworlds...on a program called WINTER FOG. Music is by BILL FONTANA, INGRAM MARSHALL, BRIAN ENO, JEFF GREINKE, MICHAEL BRÜCKNER, and ROBERT RICH.

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PGM 1269 'TRANSLUCENT DRIFTS' : jan. 8-15

This is our second retrospective of the music of Southern California ambient/minimalist composer HAROLD BUDD. Part 1 covered 1978 to 2006, when he announced his "retirement" at age 70. He wasn't serious. After a brief rest, he was more active than ever. Between then and his death at the end of 2020, he added 16 additional collaborations, soundtracks, and solo albums to his already large catalog.

Early in his career, Budd rejected the ugly, dissonant sounds of the 20th century avant-garde, embraced traditional consonant tonality, and made it new: “In my music the focus has shifted to consonance as a thing in itself," he told The New York Times in 1987. "I hear an absolute whole life in consonant chords.”

His classic "soft pedal" piano style, described as "yearning piano motifs and reverb-laden impressionism," developed and matured during his work with BRIAN ENO. After making his reputation in England, Budd returned to Los Angeles and started a second family in his 60's. While the early years had been about establishing his approach to meditative, atmospheric music, now he worked with sympatico English ambient guitarists who instinctively understood the aesthetics of his "poetic dreamworlds" and "esoteric reveries." Budd relaxed into his comfort zone, while expanding into film and TV scoring and chamber music. His career had a certain inverse symmetry: after abandoning academic classical music in the beginning, at the end he was writing for string quartets.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, our second HAROLD BUDD retrospective called TRANSLUCENT DRIFTS, featuring late solo works and collaborations with ROBIN GUTHRIE, CLIVE WRIGHT, and JOHN FOXX.

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HIGH RESOLUTION AUDIO and Hearts of Space

 

the Hearts of Space studio

 

We don’t get that many inquiries about high resolution audio, but recently one of our subscribers asked us about the audio quality of current HoS streams and why we don't offer a "high-res" service. I'd been meaning to write it up anyway for HoS News, so here goes. It's unavoidably technical, but if you care about digital sound quality, most of the terms and concepts should be familiar.

 

The national HoS program dates from 1983, which was the waning days of the analog audio era. So roughly the first 100 programs from 1983 to 1986 were produced on quarter inch analog tape. Master tapes in those days ran at 15 or 30 ips (inches per second), but we were forced to work at 7.5 ips because we were making 59:00 programs, not three or four minute songs, and a show had to fit on a standard 10.5" reel. The lower speed limited the ultra high frequency quality of our program masters slightly, but was perfectly acceptable for radio programs. Ironically, the low-end bass performance at 7.5ips was actually better than 30ips masters.

 

Most of our source material came from LPs, occasionally from master tape copies direct from the artists. In those cases, if you could ignore surface noise from the LPs (I couldn't) the quality of the original sources was pretty good. When cassettes became popular, things got worse for a few years. Many of our new age titles had to be dubbed from high speed duplicated cassettes with limited bandwidth and dynamic range and significantly more noise. Nevertheless, with careful engineering, everything sounded "listenable."

 

We got into digital as soon as it was practical, first using the Sony PCM-F1 digital recorder, and later the Sound Designer 2 computer program and its successor Pro Tools, which allowed us to do precision digital editing. Even these early digital recording systems offered substantially better audio quality — orders of magnitude less noise, distortion, and speed instability, and absolutely "flat" frequency response — and replaced our original analog tape production system. The commercial CD was introduced in 1982 and took almost ten years to completely replace LPs.  So during the 1980s our production system was increasingly rationalized around the CD format. That means stereo, 16 bit (word length), 44.1 kHz (sampling rate), linear PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) format — i.e. the so-called “Red Book” CD standard. 

 

Then and now we transfer music from CDs or digital files into Pro Tools at 16 bit/44.1 kHz, edit or remaster as necessary at 24 bit internal resolution, mix in the voiceovers and then output our program masters at the same resolution: 16 bit/44.1 kHz in BWAV (Broadcast WAV) format.  So our production system is 100% “lossless” as far as the music is concerned. Even in the few cases where an artist or record label supplies us with a higher resolution PCM original like 24 bit/96 kHz, we have to down-convert it to CD format to work with it in our production system.

 

If you are an audiophile and you are looking for true high-res digital audio, HoS is not currently able to provide it, for several reasons: 

 

•  Artists may produce their recordings using higher res formats, 

    but the vast majority still release in 16 bit/44.1 kHz.

 

•  True high-res formats are bulky: they can be up to 10x larger 

    than CD standard digital audio and require special hardware

    and software to play.

 

•  High-res originals are still difficult to stream due to bandwidth 

    limitations on typical broadband networks.

 

•  If uncompressed CDs are streamed, the bit rate is 1411.2 kbps

    or approximately 10 megabytes/minute. High-res digital would

    typically be 2-4 times greater, i.e. similar to HD video bit rates.

 

•  Bit rates like this are possible for desktop machines with direct 

    broadband connections, but these days people also want to listen 

    on WiFi on their phones and tablets, "smart speakers," and in their

    cars over the cellular network, where these heavy bit rates cannot

    always be supported reliably.

 

•  Aside from the occasional audiophile, there has been no demand 

    from the rank and file HOS audience for high-res streams; 

    especially at higher prices; especially now!

 

 

So the original sources we use today are standard uncompressed CDs, WAV or AIFF files at CD resolution, OR "lossless" (data-compressed) FLAC or ALAC files that expand to uncompressed 16 bit/44.1 kHz WAV. Occasionally, we may have to use a compressed stream file as the source, normally AAC (Advanced Audio Codec) format at 16 bit/44.1 kHz. We do not use MP3 originals; AAC offers audibly better quality at every bit rate.

 

To stream them to you, our distribution chain starts with our Hearts of Space program master files in BWAV (Broadcast WAV) format — uncompressed linear PCM at 16 bit/44.1 kHz, exactly the same as CDs.  For streaming, the programs are encoded in AAC format (technically a "lossy" codec) at 256kbps, 128kbps, 64kbps, and 40kbps, and then "packaged" into the HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) "adaptive bitrate" transport protocol for delivery to the public.

 

Which of the four available resolutions in the HLS package a typical listener will hear depends on the device they are using, the speed of their internet connection, and network conditions. In most cases, users will hear the 256kbps streams, which are very close to CD quality. The HLS protocol will seamlessly drop down to a lower resolution file "on-the-fly" if the client device is not able to keep up with the bandwidth demands of the higher res file. This is one of the reasons that HLS has become the industry standard for streaming audio.

 

There are a number of streaming music services that offer true high-res digital audio files in several different formats, including TIDAL, QOBUZ, DEEZER HIFI, PRIMEPHONIC, and AMAZON MUSIC UNLIMITED. The music offered varies, from millions of tracks across all genres to specialty collections. 

 

Clearly, Hearts of Space is specialty collection focused on a specific kind of musical experience, which we describe as "ambient, space, and contemplative music from around the world and across the centuries." Because of this broad focus, it would take a great deal of time and manual work to assemble a personal collection of "HoS-type" music on one of these high-res services, and it would still not be as comprehensive or meticulously curated.

 

I'm confident that at some point in the next few years Hearts of Space will be able to offer high-res service for at least part of its repertoire. In the meantime, we recommend that audiophiles maintain two streaming subscriptions — one to a high-res service for absolute audio quality, one to Hearts of Space for a unique musical experience.

 

Safe journey :: Stephen Hill

PGM 1132R 'POLAR FLIGHT 2' : jan.1-8

We're flying over the north polar icecap — in winter, a dazzling wonderland of white and deep blue. It's a vast glacial world of snow and ice, fractal patterns shot through with veins of melting water. Ambient electronic music, with its chilled harmonies, slowly changing rhythm patterns and endless reverberant sound images, creates the perfect soundtrack for this spectacular landscape.

In the polar night above the Arctic Circle, the winter sun never rises above the horizon; only the hypnotic ion curtains of the auroras relieve the darkness, while the sounds of moving water and breaking ice punctuate the solitude. It's a contemplative environment of sublime majesty and depth.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, a journey to the Arctic north, on a program called POLAR FLIGHT 2. Music is by ASCENDANT, YAGYA, BANCO DE GAIA, SIMON LOMAX, WINGS OF AN ANGEL, and EASYCHORD.

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PGM 727R 'ANCILLARY DREAMS' (Harold Budd Retrospective 1) - dec.25-jan.1

The revered ambient composer HAROLD BUDD was taken by the Covid-19 virus on December 8th 2020. This is the first of two retrospectives celebrating his life and his music.

Who would have believed when it was written in 1972, that the delicate chamber music that begins this show was actually an act of defiance. "When I told people," says HAROLD BUDD, "that my idea was to make music that was as devastatingly pretty as possible, it was out-and-out politics."

In fact, the California-born composer and ambient music pioneer has always been something of a contrarian. He got a late start in music, getting his degree in composition at the age of 36 at USC in Los Angeles. In the late 1960s he was loosely involved with a circle of Southern California minimalist and avant garde composers, absorbing influences from JOHN CAGE and MORTON FELDMAN, but also from jazz giants like PHAROAH SANDERS and JOHN COLTANE. He even wrote a piece for piano, harp, celeste, and topless female choir. Ah, yes. Those were the days.

In 1970 he began teaching at the California Institute of the Arts. He left six years later after meeting someone who would change his life: English producer, musician and theorist BRIAN ENO. Years later Budd told me with his typical sly wit: "The problem with teaching was that you had to listen to so much bad music."

Eno signed Budd to his new OBSCURE RECORDS label in 1976. Budd and Eno went on to create several influential and widely enjoyed albums — foundation stones of the ambient genre, including THE PLATEAUX OF MIRROR and THE PEARL.

Budd's early works had neo-classical titles, like Madrigals of the Rose Angel and The Pavilion of Dreams. In addition to his musical gifts, he had an ear for language and the sensibility of a poet, able to work with ambiguous images and squeeze emotion out of them. He didn't just do pretty, either. As you'll hear, he explored darker, stranger landscapes: melancholy, forlorn, and highly evocative.

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PGM 1098R 'CARITAS' : dec. 18-25

DECEMBER 2020 IS THE 35th ANNIVERSARY of the first Hearts of Space program created by our guest producer for western classical and sacred spacemusic, ELLEN HOLMES — a labor of love, dedication and stamina that continues to bring us experiences of sublime beauty and depth. Thank you, Ellen. We are all in your debt.

On this winter holiday transmission of Hearts of Space, Ellen brings together sacred choral and instrumental sounds of love, caring and compassion, on a program called CARITAS. The Latin word translates as charity, and is considered the highest of Christian virtues: the divine love of God, as well as the love of one's neighbor and oneself.

The program includes Anonymous early sacred chants: Baroque and Classical choral gems by MARC-ANTOINE CHARPENTIER, WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART, CHARLES GOUNOD, and FRANZ SCHUBERT, and sacred choral and classical instrumentals by contemporary composers JOHN TAVENER, IVER KLEIVE, GEOFFREY BURGON, JOHN RUTTER and PATRICK HAWES.

Holiday sounds of love, caring and compassion: CARITAS...on this transmission...of Hearts of Space.

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PGM 1268 'THE ETERNAL HARP' : dec. 11-18

Quick quiz: what's one of the oldest instruments in the world, heard in musical cultures in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas, and revered by folk, classical and contemporary musicians alike?  Here's a hint: you can think of it as a large guitar, or a small piano.

Give up? It's the harp — a descendant of the Persian chang and the Sumerian lyre — still with us after four thousand years. With tones ranging from seductively soft and warm to bright and bell-like, scales from diatonic to chromatic, and now acoustic and electric versions, the harp is both the original therapeutic instrument, and a vehicle for avant-garde experimentation. Now that is range.

On this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE — folk, classical and contemporary music for acoustic and electric harp, on a program called THE ETERNAL HARP. Music is by LISA LYNNE & ARYEH FRANKFURTER, TRINE OPSAHL, LAVINIA MEIJER, CECILIA CHAILLY, SOMEI SATOH, and from Belgium ECHO COLLECTIVE.

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PGM 1267 'COSMIC ELECTRONIC 2' : dec.4-11

Just over a hundred years ago, English composer GUSTAV HOLST created the hugely popular orchestral suite THE PLANETS. He used conventional acoustic instruments. Just think of what he'd have done with the electronic instruments of today. In fact, if you give a musician a synth the odds are they'll use it to create some of the cosmic brand of ambient we like to call "spacemusic."

It's been that way since the earliest days of electronic music. The cool, abstract, non-material tones of electronic instruments were intuitively associated with the moon, the planets, the stars and the entire cosmic panorama.

Cosmic music led to another discovery: rhythm created by electronic tones generated by programmable machines called sequencers, instead of drums. Why? Because drums grounded the music in the physical world, and tethered the imagery of the music to acoustic space. The goal was the infinite release and infinite freedom...of infinite space.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, another cosmic electronic journey across the starfields to distant galaxies, on a program called COSMIC ELECTRONIC 2. Music is by STARTERRA, EXTRAWORLD, TRANSPONDER, ASC, OVNIMOON, and SYNC24.

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PGM 1266 'RECESSION 2' : nov. 27-dec. 4

In a normal year, the autumn season brings music with smoky timbres, dissonant harmonies, descending progressions, and gentle melancholy. This year we have to include the emotions that accompany a devastating global disease, isolation, and loss. We're challenged to reach into our battered hearts and summon up additional generosity, to give thanks for what we have.

Now the days grow short, the nights grow long, and a chill descends on the land as the northern hemisphere slowly tilts away from the sun. It's a time for quiet reflection and the cultivation of inner strength to confront the challenges ahead. On this transmission of Hearts of Space, ambient, chamber and sacred music for a haunted autumn, on a program called RECESSION 2. Music is by KEVIN KELLER, ÓLAFUR ARNALDS, DAVID DARLING, GUNNARD DOBOZE, and MAX RICHTER.

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