hearts of space | news

PGM 595R 'CHILLED EUPHORIA' : december 31-january 6

For fans of electronic music, one of the most impressive developments of the last 20 years has been the rise of rave culture. Reacting against the rigid formats of corporate rock, rave DJs and promoters invented their own guerrilla venues, built grassroots communities, and with the traditional help of the latest designer chemistry, enabled a new wave of Ecstatic group experience through continuous music and dance.

Energetic, idealistic, and resourceful, they gene-spliced a new generation of intelligent electronic dance music out of the DNA of 70s electronic bands like KRAFTWERK, TANGERINE DREAM and ASHRA, JEAN MICHEL JARRE, EURO-DISCO, and the driving rhythms of TECHNO. It's been so successful that you now hear it in television commercials.

You might ask why I'm talking about rave dance culture on Hearts of Space...we're all about the contemplative sound experience, aren't we? Well...yes, but you see, even the most ardent dancers have to rest, and even the longest evenings have to end. Departing ravers were faced with the task of spinning down their hyper-stimuated metabolisms and returning to the real world — or at least getting a little sleep. And out of this problem, dear listeners, was born the need to chill.

Chill culture may be seen as the therapeutic inverse of rave: One raves...perchance to chill. One chills...to rave anew. In time, the chillout space became an alternative venue within the rave itself. In England, the chill room took on a life of its own, spawning a subgenre of quieter music designed to create a kind of electronic landing zone — slow the mind, relax the muscles, and even achieve heightened awareness by manipulating brain states with more subtle rhythms and timbres.

On paper, the architects of chill began to sound perilously close to what we once called new age music. Perish the thought — but as you'll hear on this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE, based on two English double CD compilations called CHILLED EUPHORIA and DEEP AND CHILLED EUPHORIA — they came up with some excellent downtempo ambient music.

Part of the rave ethos is the use of multiple pseudonyms by artists determined to avoid rock-star ego-tripping. So even if I told you the names of these musicians and DJs, they'd be calling themselves something else next month. Besides, this rap's long enough already, so lets wait 'til later. An hour of CHILLED EUPHORIA...on this transmission...of Hearts of Space.

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PGM 832R 'KONTINUUM' : week of 12.25.10

If musical genres had birthdays, electronic music would now be over a hundred years old. The first playable instruments appeared around the 1920s, but things really got going in 1957 with the invention of the first vacuum tube synthesizer. You can still see this electronic fossil at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center at Columbia University in New York City.

Since then, electronic music has been on a roll, merging with the computer to breed new instruments and new sounds in a 50-year period of continuous evolution. On this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE, another excursion in the electronic soundscape called KONTINUUM.

The famous "space-time continuum" in physics merges 3-dimensional space and time into a single four-dimensional construct. In music as in science, a continuum is something that retains a common character from beginning to end, and changes by regular degrees — like the music on this program, by KLAUS SCHULZE, RICHARD BONE, PSICODREAMICS, DAVID PARSONS, and IGNEOUS FLAME.

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

A Christmas gift from Hearts of Space

We've made our "SACRED SONGS OF MARY" show free to all on Christmas Eve and all Christmas day until midnight Eastern. Just sign in as usual, click the green play triangle and lovely sacred choral music will fill your space.

Next week's show will update at midnight Eastern Saturday and be free as usual all day Sunday.

Merry Christmas, spacefans! :: Stephen Hill and all at HOS.com.

iPhone app update (vers.1.1)

The first update to our iPhone app is now live in the App Store (v1.1 aka v1.01.19 — you can check your version on the 'Settings' screen.) 

Use this link to download the update directly to your iTunes client and then sync it to your iPhone. Or, use the 'Updates' tab in the App Store app to install the new version directly over WiFi or the 3G network.

This is a maintenance update but it includes a number of new features in addition to many performance enhancements and bug fixes:

• New animated splash screen flies you into deep space while program data is loading;-)
• Preloading and caching of metadata makes changing between sections much faster
• Added dynamic updating and refreshing of All Archive Channel programs and This Week's Show metadata
• Added on-demand selection and play of content in Free Streams section
• Added dynamic rechecking of cached user rights. After upgrading, you don't need to log out and back in for your new rights to take effect.
• Added Sign-Out button to allow users to Sign-Out and Sign-In as a different user without shutting down the app

Our thanks to ace programmers PAUL YAGO and JOHN ZORKO, who labored long into the night making this update as good as it could be.

We are now actively working on an ANDROID version of our app for release in early 2011, as well as designing the next generation version of the app, which will include multiple "radio channels" (full time streams) and many other features now available only on the website.

Enjoy the app and please let us know about any issues or feature requests at [email protected].

 :: SH

PGM 933 'SACRED SONGS of MARY' : Week of Dec. 17th...

In the Christian tradition, some of the most tender, heartfelt and exalted sacred music has been created in memory of Mary, mother of Jesus.

Veneration of Mary has been a subject of devotion in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions since the 2nd century, while Marian hymns and songs have been part of the Christian folk and choral music traditions since medieval times.

This abundance of love has produced a wealth of sacred and devotional music that nourishes us during the winter holidays. Though not worshipped as divine, the spirit of Mary floats over Christian history like a beneficent cloud, carrying a message of eternal feminine wisdom, patience and compassion.

In 2010, our longtime guest producer for classical and sacred spacemusic ELLEN HOLMES collected her favorites for an album that's the basis for this program called SACRED SONGS OF MARY. On this transmission of Hearts of Space, Marian music from the 12th to the 21st century by JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH, GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL, CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI, ANTHONY HOLBORNE, JOHN TAVENER, ERIC WHITACRE, MORTEN LAURIDSEN, and more.

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

PGM 932 'RADIANCE' : December 10-17, 2010

According to Celtic harpist and singer AINE MINOGUE, in pagan and Celtic history, a carol was originally a dance or song of praise and joy to honor the changing of any season. In time, carols came to be used only in winter. Beginning as vernacular songs in common languages, it took centuries for them to be sung in church and associated with the end of the year holy days.

Winter festivals celebrating the rebirth of the sun occurred in many historic cultures after preparations for the winter months were complete. In the north, these came around the time of the winter solstice — the shortest day of the year and the turning point in the sun's cycle — and symbolized the victory of light over the forces of darkness. The stones of ancient monuments like Stonehenge in England and Newgrange in Ireland were aligned with the sunrise or sunset on the solstices.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, we celebrate the seasonal festivals of light, with a program of winter carols and ambient hymns called RADIANCE. Music is by JOHN DOAN, PETER KATER, AINE MINOGUE, TIM STORY, LUDOVICO EINAUDI, SILVER, WOOD & IVORY, ANGELE DUBEAU, BRUNO SANFILIPPO, RAY CARL DAYE, DARSHAN AMBIENT, BLOW UP HOLLYWOOD, and SIGUR ROS.

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PGM 931 'SUBLIME AUSTERITY' : week of dec. 4th...

Austerity...it's a word we're hearing a lot these days.

It's being prescribed as bitter medicine for our collective financial situation, associated with the need for fiscal discipline, an antidote for our tendency to live beyond our means. In this context, austerity is painful, even unnatural.

In music, austerity can have the opposite effect — where less is more, simple is powerful, and quiet...speaks loudly. It's the antidote for complexity, not luxury.

The folk, classical, and sacred music of Northern and Eastern Europe often has this quality. Born out of long winters, bitter cold, and centuries of hardship and strife, it's a sound whose beauty and power come from unadorned simplicity, purity, and authentic emotions. On this transmission of Hearts of Space, a program called SUBLIME AUSTERITY.

Once again we turn to the German label ECM — the record company that, more than any other, has brought us the music of Northern and Eastern Europe in hundreds of austere, magnificent recordings. Featured artists are TRYGVE SEIM & ANDREAS UTNEM, VASSILIS TSABROPOULOS & ANJA LECHNER, JAN GARBAREK & THE HILLIARD ENSEMBLE, GIDON KREMER & KREMERATA BALTICA, and Georgian composer GIYA KANCHELI.

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