hearts of space | news

PGM 1124R 'FALLING LEAVES' : sept. 22-29

Summer often departs unwillingly, with warm days that linger into autumn. In years to come, the transition will probably take even longer, but eventually the sun sinks ever lower, the days grow shorter, the light dims, and the natural world prepares for the long winter to come: drying, darkening, withering, dropping, and dying — to be reborn.
 
The music of the season slows, darkens, and takes on a more somber affect, echoing the complex colors and diminishing energy of autumn, as the sun withdraws to its winter retreat. On this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE, an electro-acoustic journey in the autumn soundscape, on a program called FALLING LEAVES. Music is by LUDOVICO EINAUDI, JOHANN JOHANNSON, KEVIN KELLER, MARCONI UNION, DIATONIS, TIM STORY & HANS-JOACHIM ROEDELIUS, ROBIN GUTHRIE & HAROLD BUDD, and BRIAN ENO.

[ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

 

PGM 1355 'SUMMER'S END 2' : sept.15-22

After the burn of our increasingly intense summers—now featuring epic fires and floods in the wake of biblical storms and record-breaking heat waves—we emerge into the relatively cooler, quieter atmosphere and deflationary energy of early autumn. It's a time to regroup, recharge, rebuild, harvest, and prepare for the challenges of the winter season to come.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space from Canadian guest producer DJ EGAN, a journey down the endless monochromatic hallways, complex timbres and metallic overtones of Ambient Cool, on a program called SUMMER'S END 2. Music is by YAI, AGING + LAND TRANCE, POLIDO, NIKOS FOKAS & ARVE HENRIKSEN, JON HASSELL, JOSEPH, PHIL STROUD, RONU MAJUMBAR + RY COODER, JON HASSELL & ABHIJIT BANERJEE, and CHRISTIAN WITTMAN.

[ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

 

PGM 501R 'ALTIPLANO' : sept.8-15

The music of the high Andes plateau—the "altiplano"—comes from the western edge of South America, an area that extends a thousand miles from southern Ecuador through Peru and Bolivia, to northern Chile.

In the brilliant mountain air, the sounds of simple flutes like the quena, the signature panpipe called the siku, skin drums like the bombo, and stringed instruments like the guitar and charango—take on an uncanny appeal. It is famously a land of great beauty and hard contrasts, and the music may as easily be joyful as solemn, mystic, and sad.

On this edition of Hearts of Space, a program devoted to the popular "pan-Andean" music of the region, called ALTIPLANO.

[ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

PGM 1354 'WILD SANCTUARY' : sept.1-8

Trick question: Before recordings, before electronics, even before history, what was the original form of ambient music? Here’s a hint: it’s not what we normally call music, but it has a lot in common with music.

​The answer is the natural soundscape: a combination of the geophony—non-biological natural sounds like wind, waves, water, and weather, and the biophony—the sounds produced by all the non-human organisms in a given habitat.

​Documenting the natural soundscape has been the life work of “soundscape ecologist” BERNIE KRAUSE, who’s been recording and archiving natural soundscapes from around the world since 1979. Our 3-D sound localization ability is based on the evolutionary advantage of being able to identify the location, direction, and distance of ambient sounds—and it’s this sensibility we use when we listen to ambient music.

On this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE, the magical combination of ambient nature sounds and ambient music...on a program called WILD SANCTUARY.

[ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

PGM 879R2 'CLOUDSCAPES' : aug.25-sept.1

SUMMER brings us one of the greatest free shows on earth. In fair weather, rising water vapor freezes into microcrystals of ice, and we see a vast, constantly changing panorama of clouds, floating and flying overhead. When summer storms arrive, the sky grows dark with the drama of thunder and lightning — nature's original multimedia show.

Clouds come in four families: high, middle, low, and vertical — with official Latin names like cirrus, cumulus and stratus. Satellites now give us the big picture of cloud patterns around the planet and how they affect the weather; there are even clouds on other planets, and interstellar clouds in outer space. It's no wonder that ambient musicians find clouds a major inspiration.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, a high altitude summer electronic journey called CLOUDSCAPES. Music is by DIGITONAL, RUBEN GARCIA, FORREST FANG, ROBERT RICH, TERRA AMBIENT, BRUNO SANFILIPPO, and DARSHAN AMBIENT.

[ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

PGM 1353 'DOWNTEMPO NIGHTS' : aug. 18-25

In these now hotter summer nights, an ambient music fan may crave a bit more rhythm in their chilled sonic cocktail, and for that we have Downtempo—an electronic sub-genre characterized by an atmospheric sound and slower beats than typical electronic dance music.

Legend traces the origin of Downtempo to the English city of Bristol in the late 1980’s and the emergence of “trip-hop”—a psychedelic fusion of hip-hop and electronics by popular artists like PORTISHEAD and MASSIVE ATTACK. By the early 1990’s, dropping the vocals and adding rhythmic influences from dub reggae gave rise to a melodic, instrumental chill-room genre that came to be known as Downtempo Electronica, or just Downtempo.

On this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE, a nocturnal summer journey called DOWNTEMPO NIGHTS. Music is by PARALLAX-5, ONE ARC DEGREE, LAUGE, ASC, CHRISTOPHER WILLITS, MARCONI UNION, JOHAN AGEBJÖRN, and CONNECT.OHM.

[ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

PGM 875R 'INDIA EVOLUTION' : july 11-18

The drone...the modal scale...the sinuous, ornamented melodic line. Even without a sitar or a tabla, you know you're enveloped in one of the new Indian-influenced strains of ambient music.

Hundreds of years ago, while Western music turned right at polyphony, harmony, and the equal-tempered scale, Indian classical music continued to develop the old modal system of scales and natural intervals, in a vocal-centered, monophonic style.

Where we created chords and counterpoint, monumental symphonies, hymns and songs, Indian music continued to evolve the melodic sophistication of raga, the rhythmic complexity of tala, and the patient pursuit of mood and depth.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, we return to the sublime world of Indian ambient and devotional music, on a program called INDIA EVOLUTION.

[ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

PGM 1352 'ANCESTRAL ECHOES' : july 4-11

The Techno-Tribal genre of electro-acoustic ambient emerged in 1988, the fruit of a remarkable act of musical anthropology by American electronic musician STEVE ROACH, who journeyed from Los Angeles to the Australian outback to collaborate with native aboriginal musicians and absorb their mythology of The Dreamtime. The result was a revolutionary and still influential album: DREAMTIME RETURN. Writing about its descendants in 1993, I said:

"The natives are drumming tonight on the cyber-tribal frontier.
It's a worldwide movement; composers on every continent/
exploring the boundaries of world music as it evolves into our techno-tronic culture.
It's a deliberate collision—between the vital spirit of the ancient tribal world,
and the rational logic of the electronic age."

Three decades later, the renamed Tribal-Ambient genre continues to refine the sound, while maintaining the spirit of the original innovation.On this transmission of Hearts of Space, a journey through space and time, tribal energy and digital technology, on a program called ANCESTRAL ECHOES.

Music is by BYRON METCALF & SHANE MORRIS, FRORE, ALIAS ZONE, ROBERT RICH, RESONANT DRIFT, and NUMINA.

[ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

PGM 877R2 'SUSTAINABLE WAVES' : july 28-aug. 4

Guest Host STEVIE RAY HILL:

Well, spacefans, we started out doing a summer acoustic show, but it morphed into a western-style slide guitar and pedal steel show, and then into a "western landscape" show. Think canyons. 

But wait, it wasn't done: it took a head fake toward the Native American flute, but on the way it shape-shifted into something more ethereal: call it "pedal steel atmospherica."

Whatever. Time for a title to tie it together. On this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE, it's a sultry journey in western spaces called SUSTAINABLE WAVES. Actually, we borrowed the title from SUSTAINABLEWAVES.COM of Austin, Texas. These dudes don't just abide...they sustain.

Music's by DANIEL LANOIS, BLUE STAR, JAPANCAKES, BUCKETHEAD, MARJORIE DE MUYNCK, and PATRICK O'HEARN.

[ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

PGM 1351 'MINARETS OF THE SOUL 2' : july 21-28

THE MUSIC OF THE MIDDLE EAST includes the Arabic-speaking countries of the Arabian peninsula and North Africa, Persian music from Iran, Jewish music from Israel, plus Armenian, Kurdish, Azeri, Cypriot, Turkish, traditional Assyrian, and Coptic Christian ritual music. It's a complex mixture of history and tradition, innocence and wisdom, longing and heartache, passion and desire.

With its quarter note scales, propulsive rhythms, common instruments and melismatic vocals, Middle Eastern music is distinctive and widely appreciated. On this transmission of Hearts of Space, a journey in the inner landscapes of the Middle East, on a program called MINARETS OF THE SOUL 2.

Music is by OPIUM MOON, ZIKR PROJECT, RAFAEL KRUX, ANOUAR BRAHEM, KAYHAN KALHOR, ELIYAHU SILLS, NAIRUZ, and DHAFER YOUSSEF. 

[ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]