Archives

PGM 1408 ‘DARK SIDE OF THE FORCE’ : oct. 24-31

The advent of the astrological house of Scorpio each year brings with it the ambient sub-genres of Gloom, Gothic, and Dark Atmospheres. This music displays a romantic quest for strangeness, a taste for the ominous, and a fascination with darkness, death, and decay that’s appropriate for the fall season—and celebrated on All Hallow’s Eve.

Grief, fear, depression, doleful lamentations, and solemn processions are expressions of the season, but this music has a mysterious restorative power that comes from the emotional confrontation with challenging feelings. The Greeks called it…catharsis.

On this Scorpio transmission of Hearts of Space, it’s another Dark Ambient journey for Halloween, on a program called ‘DARK SIDE OF THE FORCE.’ Music is by RICHARD BONE, STEVE ROACH & SORIAH, INSECTARIUM, AJNA, SUN’S MUSE, ARGYRE PLANITIA, and MOUNT SHRINE.

[ view program ] [ view Flickr image gallery ]

LIVE EVENT Saturday Oct. 25, 2pm

Hearts of Space producer STEPHEN HILL in conversation
with ambient music historian DANIEL BROMFIELD

No.1 in the series “Contemplative Music In Marin”
Saturday Oct. 25th, 2:00pm -3:30pm at the
Belvedere-Tiburon Library, 1501 Tiburon Blvd., Tiburon, CA

EVENT PAGE : https://www.beltiblibrary.org/event?id=14376098

Join Stephen Hill, host of the nationally syndicated “space music” radio program Hearts of Space, in discussion with Daniel Bromfield about his over-50-year career on the airwaves and the history of ambient and new age music in Marin and beyond.

Stephen Hill has been broadcasting his nationally syndicated radio program “Hearts of Space” since 1973, focusing on the broad scope of “space music,” which includes the ambient and new age music of which Marin County was a prime incubator in the 1970s.

During this time, he’s brought national attention to ambient, new age and experimental artists while remaining at the cutting edge of technology, being an early adopter of both streaming and AI voice technology.

For the first in a planned series of talks with local luminaries focusing on Marin County’s history as a hub of contemplative music, Hill talks to ambient music historian Daniel Bromfield about his over-50-year career broadcasting the sounds of space over the airwaves.

Daniel Bromfield is a writer, critic and musician based in San Francisco. In addition to writing about music and film for the Marin Independent Journal, he has a prolific freelance career with publications such as Pitchfork, Stereogum and Atlas Obscura.

STEPHEN HILL
DANIEL BROMFIELD

PGM 1092R ‘SPIRIT OF ARMENIA’ : oct. 17-24

Armenian landscape with Mt. Ararat

THE ANCIENT LAND OF ARMENIA has had a complex and often contentious history. Sitting astride the Silk Road trade route in the southern Caucasus, east of Turkey and north of Iran and Azerbaijan, Armenia served as one of the gateways between Christian Europe and the non-Western cultures of the Middle East and Central Asia.

Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as the state religion in 301 A.D. Both location and history account for the rich set of cultural influences that became Armenian music, from roots in Zoroastrian and Pagan folk and sacred music, through the rise of Christianity, and continuing to evolve for over 1500 years.

The great historical figure of Armenian music was KOMITAS — the late 19th/early 20th century scholar, priest, folk song collector and arranger, composer, choir-master and singer. Educated in an Armenian seminary, then in western classical music in Berlin, Komitas combined traditional sacred and secular Armenian modal music with western classical practice, to create the foundation for an authentic Armenian classical music.

The German ECM label has been documenting new and traditional Armenian music for over 30 years, with a series of superb recordings, many of which have been featured on these programs. On this transmission of Hearts of Space, we focus on two of these recordings, on a program called “SPIRIT OF ARMENIA.”

[ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ]

PGM 1407 ‘DESCENDING DUSK’ : oct.10-17

AUTUMN ARRIVES QUIETLY, with less drama than other seasons: a gradual slowing of the solar-powered activity of summer, accompanied by a subtle cooling of the air and dimming of the light, as the sun moves south for the winter.

in contrast, the animal world is all activity—a flurry of preparation for the challenges of the season to come—while the changing colors of the leaves signals a silent chemistry of decay and transformation that fuels the next generation of plants, and feeds the animals with fruits and seeds.

For ambient composers, it’s time to explore slower tempos, darker harmonies, descending progressions, the bittersweet timbres of the woodwind family, and the metallic overtones of bells and horns.

On this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE…Ambient-Classical atmospheres and introspections for autumn, on a program called “DESCENDING DUSK.” Music is by THE AMNIS INITIATIVE, DEEPSPACE, DEBORAH MARTIN & JILL HALEY, CHRISTIAN WITTMAN, GEORGE WALLACE, and ISHQ.

[ view program ] [ view Flickr image gallery ]

PGM 888R ‘TIME OF TRANSITION’ : oct.3-10

Four times a year, the seasons turn.
The changes can be subtle or dramatic.
These are the times of transition in the natural world —
the original, the most pervasive, varied, and far reaching
ambient soundscape of them all.

Societies and cultures go through their own transitions.
Sometimes they’re welcomed;
more often, they are resisted, even feared.
In nature, the wise, the lucky, and the flexible
evolve, and learn to adapt.

On this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE,
we ride the receding energy of summer as it descends into fall,
on a program called TIME OF TRANSITION.

Music is by JON HOPKINS, BARCELONA, PSICODREAMICS, DAVID HELPLING & JON JENKINS, HAROLD BUDD & CLIVE WRIGHT, BRUNO SANFILIPPO & MATHIAS GRASSOW, DAVID DARLING, and FALLING YOU.

[ view program ] [ view Flickr image gallery ]

PGM 1406 ‘INDISPENSABLE’ : sept.26-oct.3

Program 1406 banner

Let’s talk about the piano, ladies and gentlemen. It’s so ubiquitous and flexible that it plays a part in almost every area of contemporary music. With its huge dynamic range, rhythmic and percussive capability, chordal and harmonic facility, and melodic expressivity—no other instrument can play as many roles, both solo and within an ensemble. Today, we can enhance its flexibility by modifying the sound of the piano—spatially expanding it with electronics, making it more ethereal; or perversely, celebrating action noise, making it more physical.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, ambient, atmospheric, and contemplative music for the piano, on a program called “INDISPENSABLE.” Music is by LUDOVICO EINAUDI, TOM EATON, KEVIN KELLER, MASAKO, JOSHUA VAN TASSEL, PAUL CANTELON & LILI HAYDN, GABRÍEL ÓLAFS, and BEN LUKAS BOYSEN.

[ view program ] [ view Flickr image gallery ]

PGM 985R ‘BADLANDS’ : sept.19-26

Out on the western range, there’s places where the deep prairie meets the desert at the end of the line. Places where the tough get going and the outlaws go to hide: where the land’s eroded, the water’s scarce, the weather’s bad, the nights are dangerous, and everything you see…is a survivor. It’s called “The Badlands.” 

On this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE, a program inspired by this hard and beautiful environment…called BADLANDS. Music is by DANIEL LANOIS, ERIC TINGSTAD, CARL WEINGARTEN, BRUCE KAPHAN, EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY, JAPANCAKES and DAVID TORN.

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

PGM 1405 ‘COSMIC ELECTRONIC 4’ : sept 12-19

This time we return to a series we began in 2015, and continued in 2020 and 2021. Yes, spacefans, it’s another transmission in our seminal electronic music series—”COSMIC ELECTRONIC 4.”

It’s seminal because we’ve been obsessed with the genre since 1973, but didn’t get around to naming a program after it ‘til decades later. As I said then, “The analog synthesizer allowed musicians to design entirely new sounds and created a new kind of spatial imagery that evoked the vastness of cosmic space. It could be cold and dark, warm and romantic, dramatic or contemplative—and it came to be called “spacemusic.”

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, a deep space journey to newly discovered star fields, thanks to the awesome JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE — on a program called “COSMIC ELECTRONIC 4.” Music is by MARTIN STÜRTZER, STARTERRA, DREAMSTATE LOGIC, JIM OTTAWAY, COUSIN SILAS & MICHAEL BRÜCKNER, KEVIN BRAHENY FORTUNE, and KLAUS SCHULZE.

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

PGM 1354R ‘WILD SANCTUARY’ : sept. 5-12

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.” Music is by ISHQ, BRIAN ENO, STEVE ROACH, PATRICK O’HEARN, ARIEL KALMA, RUTH HAPPEL, and DANNA & CLEMENT.

[ view program page ] [ view Flickr image gallery ]

PGM 1404 ‘AFRICAN DELIGHT’ : aug.29 – sept.5

AFRICA…an enormous continent, with a vast and diverse array of music.

In Sub-Saharan Africa it’s mostly upbeat, polyrhythmic, and joyful, designed to accompany dancing and celebration. There’s also an extensive traditional folk music, with songs for every occasion, and historic religious and ceremonial music. It’s different—so it’s not surprising that it took us more than six years to produce our first program exploring the slower, quieter side of African music in 1989.

The most obvious difference when compared to contemporary ambient from Western countries is the emotional quality. Where Western ambient is often cool and trance-inducing, African ambient makes a joyful noise, and remains committed to traditional acoustic instruments, like the 21 string harp called the kora, the metallic thumb piano called the mbira, the West African lute called the ngoni, and a wide array of drums and percussion.

On this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE, the seductive polyrhythms and sweet modal harmonies of Sub-Saharan Africa, on a program called “AFRICAN DELIGHT.”  Music is by AYUB OGADA, SONA JOBARTEH, BETWEEN, STEPHAN MICUS, DANIEL BERKMAN, WILL RIDENOUR & BETSY BEVAN, and SAMITE.

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