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PGM 1189 'DEEP DUB' : july 27-aug 3

The history of Jamaican Dub music is rich and fascinating. Dub grew out of reggae in the 1960s, and evolved well beyond its popular parent. It was a studio craft where producers created instrumental remixes of reggae tracks by removing the vocals, adding echo, reverb and delay, and dubbing in new ambient sounds. Essentially, dub was an early form of popular electronic music.

If you think all this had something to do with cannabis, you'd be understating the case. In a 1982 essay, LUKE EHRLICH said: "With dub, Jamaican music spaced out completely. If reggae is Africa in the New World, then dub must be Africa on the moon; it's the psychedelic music I expected to hear in the 1960s...and didn't. The bass and drums conjure up a dark, vast musical portrait of outer space, with sounds suspended like glowing planets or the fragments of instruments careening by, leaving trails like comets and meteors."

Dub was a natural link to later electronic genres like techno, ambient, trip hop and electronic dance music. On this transmission of Hearts of Space, the trancey beats of Jamaican Dub and its electronic descendants, on a program from guest producer DAVID J. EGAN called DEEP DUB. Music is by JAH WOBBLE & MARCONI UNION, ORKUS, FINGERS IN THE NOISE, ECHO GRID, PURL & DEFLEKTION, LOSCIL, and MOTIONFIELD.

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PGM 1188 'SUMMERTONES 3 : july 20-27

Believe it or not, the combination of ambient nature sounds and electronic music was actually an innovation in the 1970s. And you may be surprised that the idea had a history in European classical music, especially in England and France.

In England, it was the so-called "pastoral" composers like ARNOLD BAX and RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS, who created orchestral images of nature. In France, it was the Impressionists, from CLAUDE DEBUSSY to OLIVIER MESSIAEN. They didn't have recordings, so they created new instruments and playing techniques to imitate natural sounds like wind and birdsongs.

By the mid-20th century, we could record the sounds of nature, edit them and play them back at will. In the 1950s, avant-garde composers like JOHN CAGE were promoting an awareness of ambient sound as equal to music. Music...was how you listened. Incorporating nature sounds into music was the next step; beside, film soundtracks had been doing it for years.

The psychology is foundational: humans evolved listening to natural sounds, and they send a message we respond to instinctively. For example, birdsong on a gentle summer morning is delightful and calming. Blend in some subtle synthesizers, season with gourmet reverberation and you have what two young Canadians named MYCHAEL DANNA and TIM CLÉMENT called "environmental electronic music."

It's an idea that was embraced by New Age musicians and in time became a bit of a cliché. But it led to an electronic genre of extended tone-color journeys in virtual space, which is still alive and well. On this transmission of Hearts of Space...the fluid, airy sound of summer spacemusic, on a program called SUMMERTONES 3.

Music is by MEG BOWLES, DANNA & CLÉMENT, CHRONOTOPE PROJECT, ALTUS, and STELLIA.

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PGM 1187 'DESERT SOUL 2' : july 13-20

Over the last 35 years we've broadcast some 31 programs inspired by the evocative, intensely moving music of North Africa and the Middle East. And almost every time, I've added a disclaimer that these programs have nothing to do with the contentious politics of the region. After all, these are some of the oldest cultures on earth, with complex, artistically evolved musical traditions. But in one sense, politics has made a difference. The political ferment has led to a diaspora of hundreds of the region's best musicians, who now live and work in France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Canada, and the U.S.

From the relative safety and stability of western cities, nostalgia for their homelands has produced what poet HAKIM BEY memorably called "romantic transcultural exile music of the Middle East." These creative fusions of Arabic, North African, Persian and electronic music stand as living examples of cultural tolerance and communication.

I'm Stephen Hill and on this transmission of Hearts of Space, we return to the superheated spaces of the Middle East and North Africa, on a program called DESERT SOUL 2.

Music is by MICHEL BANABILA & MEHMET POLAT, RHO UTASATO, YUVAL RON ENSEMBLE, MAHSA VAHDAT, PETE NAMLOOK & BURHAN OÇAL, ALEX KHASKIN, DHAFER YOUSSEF, ANOUAR BRAHEM, MERCAN DEDE, and OMAR FARUK TEKBILEK.

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PGM 978R 'FLOATING WAVES' : july 6-13

Of all the psycho-physical sensations produced by ambient music, perhaps the most widely enjoyed is the feeling of weightless floating.

Of course, there are other ways to achieve this sought-after state: scuba diving, for example, is an exercise in "neutral buoyancy," where the diver floats suspended in the water column, weightless and serene. And scientist JOHN LILLY and others famously promoted "floatation tanks" filled with body-temperature salt water for floating psychonauts.

At the extreme sports end of the weightlessness experience, we have roller coasters, tethered drops like bungee jumping, high pressure air columns, and diving planes with padded interiors.

But let's face it spacefans — music is safer and more accessible than all the others. On this transmission of Hearts of Space, we take an anti-gravity journey in the ambient soundscape called FLOATING WAVES. Music is by THOUGHT GUILD, CARL SAGAN's GHOST, JONN SERRIE, COYOTE OLDMAN, STU JENKS, and CONSTANCE DEMBY.

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