The Life and Death of the Identity

If you have been reading my posts you may have guessed that a major driver for me has been awakening.  I have enthusiastically followed a path that has moved me to ever deepening levels of understanding about the true nature of being, consistently opening up and dropping into places within me that now hold no identity, where the personal is totally unimportant, and the impulse of pure, unrestricted creation is able to shine out.  As I have shed the structures that have held my identity, I have come across some interesting challenges in relating to others and in relating to all those things to which our culture in the West gives value.    

I have been looking at my experiences as my relationship to the ego and identity – prime structures of separation – have changed and how that relates to my movement through life back towards the pulse of Creation….. It starts for us all around the time of birth when we come into form, into Life, and create an I-dentity.

The ego-identity is part of the personality structure that develops throughout life.  As a young child we are loved, nurtured, fed, held….or not.  Out of these experiences we individuate into the people that we bring into our relationships both with ourselves and with others. We individuate from our parents but also from the pure impulse of Life, learning ways that hold us apart from the true nature of our beings as unfettered expressions of all creation. We move from a state of universal union in which the heart freely resonates with everything, without fear, to one that sees itself as a unique thing, separate, special, quantifiable, defended, and we develop a personality with defenses formed by fears related to perceived threats to our survival.  These defenses create protective armoring not only in our musculature – affecting how we hold our bodies – but in how we express our energy through our emotional and mental responses to specific situations. With the fleshing out of our defenses, the ego is fully formed and with it a sense of ‘I’ – the I-dentity is born.  And the bulk of this happens before our 7^th birthdays!! 

None of us, unless Avataric, are spared this process of separation from the Mystery that is the Divine Creator.  As we incarnate numerous veils of separation are created with the strength and resistance of Teflon, yet so thin as to be almost undetectable to microscopic ethereal examination.  They are part of the spiritual skeleton of our beings. The presence of these veils makes any evolutionary move back into the unified field of pure creation impossible.  You cannot awaken with them in place, and your unique life challenges and dramas will continue to repeat themselves for as long as you identify with the places of forgetting that they support.  Unless spiritual evolution is one of your drivers they are unlikely to go, and you are equally unlikely to be interested in what might be the deeper truth behind your identity.  But if it is, and when they do go, the ego can no longer hold onto its position as the leading character in the play that is your life, and so you lose your identity.

The persona that we identify with is reinforced throughout our lives, firstly by our parents who name us and generally instill in us certain values, beliefs, and prejudices that create the foundations of our realities.  Then the reflection of our friends, acquaintances, and life experiences are added to the pot, and all these elements are embraced by our egos.  Our identity, unique and separate, is then constantly reinforced by whoever we come into contact with.  It happens on many levels but the first one is likely to be on meeting someone, when the questions we ask help form an impression of ‘self’ and ‘other’ in our minds. These ‘I am’s….’ that we exchange with each other help us to relate and each question asked builds an instantaneous picture, giving a sense of identity, interests and lifestyle.  For example:

What do you do?                        ‘I am an art consultant/I am an energy therapist’

Where do you come from?         ‘I am English, and I live in New York’

You can change your identity superficially by leaving your job without having the security of another to go to, or selling your home without any plans to find another, as I did. Either will most likely send a tremor of anxiety through your community of family and friends, and you may find that they attempt to lure you back by sending out tendrils of fear unconsciously designed to scare you back into the fold.  You will be breaking the accepted mold, leaving behind the identity that defines you to them, and which they have helped you forge.  You will probably find that you need to make adjustments as you create new relationships that reflect the movements in the axis of your existence. 

Evolutionary levels of transformation and the human response to it, will occur when you move from merely swopping or adding identities to undermining core positions and beliefs, and the supports that hold them in place. When you do this the ego will be seriously threatened and the nature of the ego-identity has to adapt or die.  Surface changes, like the ones mentioned above, can be the forerunners of the seismic movements that are going on in the inner planes of your being as you start dissolving the structures of your existence, and so too your I-dentity.  A signature of significant change is the dropping away of things, habits, and people whose presence in your life no longer resonate with you or serve you.  In relationships, if you can’t bridge the divides that can form as you change – and the onus falls on you to do this – then you will find that gradually your worlds drift apart.

As you embrace a new direction and challenge the nature of reality your extremely resilient ego is dented, but it takes on the changes as if it was going to gain from the direction you are taking.  It embraces this change from an intellectual place and creates a new identity as you embark on your search for the truth.  My ego-identity took on the identity of a spiritual path AND the spiritual seeker alongside the existing identities and the defended personality structures it already ruled.  It was happy!  It was behind this new venture!  Everything was under control, and all was well in its new world.  My interest in returning to Source had become something that my I-dentity , my ego, embraced as being fruitful to its long term wellbeing as an individual, even though it was not.  It didn’t recognize that it had everything to lose – that for it the perception of gain was just another illusion. 

Personally speaking, my journey is not unique.  Like many, I created a fabulous and strong ego that allowed me to successfully navigate the challenges that I met on my life’s path.  The impulse to awaken to the true nature of my being was not apparent to me and it didn’t start to emerge until I was in my 30s and I started to feel some dissatisfaction with what I was creating in my life. Whether we know it consciously or not, there is generally a subliminal pull that leads us, by hook or by crook, forward towards a reunion with Self. Until that point the ego, and its many masks, rules.  In my case it was never asked to step aside and allow what was behind the mask of identity to come through, because there was no awareness that there was anything other to relate with.  My identity until that time, had shifted, morphed, been knocked a little, but remained clear.  Looking back, I can chart how I, as an adult, moved through life and how I got to where I am today.  My true nature remained quietly hidden, waiting until I got fed up with the play that I had created. It has gone something like this:

• I lived a materially successful and socially active life – I conformed with the accepted standards of my peers to a large degree.
• I started to get panic attacks when some of the most painful relational woundings of my childhood began to appear in my adult relationships.  My passion for my work into which I had put 100% of my being was seriously compromised and I turned to the healing arts for help, through therapy and hands-on healing.
• I connected, with the help of my healer, to parts of me that I never realized existed before or had forgotten – I experienced expanded states of being and became fascinated with quantum theories and realities.
• I started to read about, train in, and experience other levels of existence. My awareness and my energetic container expanded enormously.
• I found teachers who reflected to me the true nature of being and encouraged me as I stepped into the stream of the awakening path.  Their awake and aware consciousness helped me to evolve.
• I stopped planning, dropped structure, and went with the flow of Life.   I sold my apartment and put all my belongings with the exception of a suitcase of clothes into storage and I traveled to places around the world that I felt called to visit. 
• I lost my sense of the personal; my sense of being in any way special; my identity with a spiritual or any other path; my templates for existence, and my identity.

It wasn’t until the supports that maintained the drama of my existence began to crumble that the ego’s throttle-hold on my life weakened, and so did my sense of identity.  But it wasn’t until the core veils went that held me in separation from Self, that the nature of my journey shifted.  I had had transcendent experiences, tastes of bliss or emptiness that felt like they must be what enlightenment is all about, but until the structures of separation disappeared, I didn’t recognize that these were little more than expanded states, amazing experiences that have very little to do with true awakening.  My I-dentity remained intact until the intellectual understanding dropped from my head and traveled right through my heart into the core of existence.  Often, for this to happen, you are called to face your greatest fear – the one that holds your deepest life-long wounding – and this is what happened for me too.  Only by surrendering did the structures that I had thought were there to protect me reveal themselves to be keeping me from my heart’s desire for reunion with the Beloved, the Creator of All that Is, and with this awareness they dissolved.  When this happens there is no choice but to wake up from your dream to the reality that there is ‘no one’ there. 

Firstly, and most importantly, you wake up to the knowledge that there is no personal I-dentity with who you were.  When you actively hunt for it in the corridors and rooms of your existence there is no ‘I’.  I was then aware that I am nothing but an expression of the pulse of creation. This knowing was slim at the beginning, but as I started to live life from this place, embodying it as fully as I could, each aspect of identity that had built up over the course of my life started to crumble.  For me it was two years from a point where I recognized that the Identity had gone to a point where I had embodied this awareness to a place of real understanding.  Like me, you may feel echoes of your identity through the conditioned responses that still trigger you – and language demands that you refer to it all the time – but the seeker, the do-er, the sense of personal, they go, along with other aspects of your being.  For me, one amazing part of this was in finding commonality with beautiful or mundane lifeforms around me, and really seeing that with the ‘death’ of my ego-identity I was just another essence expressed in Life, no different from any other, and part of the whole.

This life is a journey, that’s for sure! The death of the identity is not The End.  It is one step deeper into The Mystery!

©2009 Sarah Lidsey

Per una sola notte, lunedì 7 Dicembre 2009, l’Echoes presenta l’evento ‘Ambarabaciccicocò – My Memo’: la serata dedicata agli studenti di Rimini e Riccione con i grandi nomi del Memorabilia.

La sala principale, o The Living Room, saranno protagonisti della serata Dj Cek, PCP Live, Datura, Ricci jr in un memorial Riccio dj e Satanika. Nelle altre sale troverete ambienti pop ‘roll e Tube Station.

Un evento assolutamente da non perdere: l’ingresso è di 15€ con una consumazione.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes es un juego de aventuras en primera persona desarrollado por Retro Studios y distribuido por Nintendo. Fué lanzado el 15 de Noviembre de 2004 en Estados Unidos, el 16 de Mayo de 2005 en Japón y el 26 de Noviembre de 2005 en Europa para la consola Nintendo Game Cube, y recientemente una versión para Wii. Es el segundo juego de la trilogía Prime de la saga Metroid.

Argumento

El juego transcurre seis meses después de los acontecimientos ocurridos en Metroid Prime. La cazarrecompensas Samus Aran ha sido contratada por la Federación Galáctica para investigar la desaparición de una nave tripulada de la federación en el planeta Éter y prestarles ayuda si es necesario. En Éter se encontrará desde sus enemigos naturales, los Piratas Espaciales, una raza alienígena: los Luminarios, que le piden ayuda para derrotar a sus antagonistas, los Oscuros (provenientes de la versión oscura de Éter: Éter Oscuro, nacido de una colisión de un meteorito de Phazon contra Éter), y también se encontrará con su versión oscura: Samus Oscura que es como Samus pero con mejores armas que la original.

Jugabilidad

La jugabilidad es la misma que la del primer Metroid Prime, Echoes es un juego de aventuras, exploración y plataformas en primera persona dejando en un segundo plano los combates. La cámara de situa dentro del casco de Samus donde se visualizan el radar, un mapa tridimensional de la zona, un medidor de peligro, los visores, misiles y munición de rayo disponibles. Se progresa en el juego cuando consigues nuevas armas y habilidades recorriendo el planeta y derrotando a los jefes que aguarden algunas de ellas.

Regiones

La historia del juego transcurre en Éter, del que existe su versión oscura, por lo tanto todas las regiones de Éter tienen su versión oscura. Las regiones que se visitan son:

Tierras del Templo: Es la región en la que comienzas al principio del juego. Esta región es la que se comunica con todas las demás. Su parte oscura es Tierras del Templo Oscuro.

Yermos de Agón: Es una zona desértica y es la base de operaciones de los Piratas Espaciales. Su parte oscura es Yermos de Agón Oscuro.

Ciénagas de Torvus: Es una zona de habitat acuático donde la mitad del templo está inundado. Su parte oscura es Ciénagas de Torvus Oscuro.

Fortaleza del Santuario: Es una zona de gran tecnología creada por los luminarios para defenderse de los oscuros. Su parte oscura es La Colmena.

Gran Templo: Es donde se encuentra el líder de los luminarios y donde hibernan el resto hasta que desaparezca Éter Oscuro. Su parte oscura es el Templo del Cielo donde se encuentra el líder de los Oscuros (no llega a ser una región).

Inventario

Samus tiene un amplio repertorio de armas y habilidades para progresar en la aventura. Echoes tienes más armas y habilidades que Prime:

Cañon: este puede usar rayos y misiles:

Rayos: está el Rayo Estándar con su combo de recarga al igual que los anteriores juegos de Metroid pero es el único que se repite hay tres rayos nuevos con sus respectivos combos de recarga: Rayo Oscuro, Rayo de Luz y Rayo Aniquilador estos rayos tienen munición limitada la barra de munición de luz, la barra de munición de oscuridad, el Rayo Aniquilador utiliza las dos barras de munición.

Misiles: son los mismos que en Metroid Prime y añaden una nueva habilidad el Localizador capaz de lanzar cinco misiles a la vez.

Morfosfera: las habilidades son las mismas que en Metroid Prime: Bombas, Bombas de Energía, Aracnosfera y Turbosfera.

Trajes: los trajes de Echoes son menos que en Prime: empieza con el Traje Climático, el siguiente es el Traje Oscuro que resiste más a la atmósfera de Éter Oscuro, el siguiente es el Traje de Luz que resiste totalmente la atmósfera de Éter Oscuro.

Visores: Visor de Combate, Visor de Escaneo,Visor Oscuro donde ves cosas ocultas en Éter Oscuro y el Ecovisor.

Dispositivos de movimiento: Botas de Salto Espacial, Módulo Acuático y Salto en Barrena.

Modo Multijugador

Hay dos modos de juego Venganza y Codicia:

En el Modo Venganza simplemente tienes que derrotar al resto de jugadores sin importar las armas que utilices, aunque tambien puedes almacenar armas para luego enfrentarte al otro jugador. Gana el que más veces mate al resto de jugadores.

En el Modo Codicia simplemente tientes que coger más monedas que los demás jugadores para ganar. Puedes vencer a los otros jugadores para quitarles sus monedas o buscar el cofre que se esconde en el escenario.

En este modo pueden jugar hasta cuatro jugadores, hay hasta 6 escenarios distintos (algunos los tienes que desbloquear en el modo historia).

Opinión personal

Es el mejor juego de Nintendo Game Cube, gráficamente inmejorable, escenarios que muestran un mundo en declive pero a la vez maravilloso, cambios drásticos de escenarios; estás en un templo desértico, te vas a otro templo y éste resulta estar lleno de tecnología alienígena. Trae armas totalmente nuevas que tienen que ver con la trama y jefes totalmente nuevos nunca vistos en anteriores entregas de la saga Metroid, y una historia entre dos mundos, dos razas: luz y oscuridad, o sea, Samus y Samus Oscura. Otra obra maestra de Retro Studios. Pero esto no es todo, si no lo has jugado todavía tienes la oportunidad de hacerlo con Metroid Prime Trilogy para Wii. No te arrepentirás.

Lo Mejor

• Vídeos espectaculares hechos con el motor del juego
• Luchas contra los jefes, sobre todo los jefes de templo y Samus Oscura.
• Multijugador, puedes jugar con tus amigos como si todos fuerais Samus.
• Escenarios muy variados, tienes la oportunidad de ver la versión de cada escenario de Éter.
• Historia totalmente nueva, nunca vista en la saga Metroid.

Lo peor

• Se repiten algunas cosas de la versión anterior.

Nota: 9,8

Si tienes la oportunidad de jugar a este juego aprovéchala, no te arrepentirás.

Saludos

ScorpioDominator.

Steve Roach has created 20 years of Echoes Soundscapes.

You can hear an audio version of this blog wit Steve Roach’s music.

Steve Roach calls his studio the Time Room and it’s an appropriate name for a place where music plays with concepts of time and perception.

STEVE ROACH : It’s about time, the distortion of time, the playing with time. Ever since I was very very young I was always like to move in and out of time.  I remember when I was very young I liked to spin in circles like children do and just feel that disorientation and I really enjoyed that feeling.

Steve Roach didn’t spring fully formed from his synthesizer circuitry. In the 1970s he was listening to space music from Europe, and in particular Klaus Schulze.  In fact, until he moved to Tucson 20 years ago, the cover of Schulze’s 1975 album, Timewind, sat in Roach’s studio like a religious icon.

Steve Roach: I think when I heard Timewind it was really the album that hit the switch for me. There’s just a sound and a quality of the sound and a feeling that the sound gave me went so deep and cut through so many layers and was so direct, the experience of that music was so direct, it was so familiar.

Roach is now an icon in his own right.  He’s released over 50 solo albums, and a like number of collaborations.  His signature album is Dreamtime Return. Inspired by a trip to Australia, it sent him into a more acoustic, organic sound that he pursued for the next decade.

Steve Roach: The dreamtime and states I wanted to evoke on that album are the essential aspects of combining almost earth type sounds from the environment with internal deep physical feelings and sounds.

It was a short step for Steve Roach from Australia to Arizona.   His soundscapes for the last 20 years have been inspired by the high desert there.

Steve Roach: It’s the kind of landscape that I am personally attracted to for whatever reason. This stark, absolutely alien like desertscape which is barren with possibilities but really evocative and other-worldly in its presence.

I’m always hesitant to say what Steve Roach’s most recent album is, because a new one is likely to drop at any moment.  But in 2009 he released the album, Destination Beyond, an album that looks back to his early work as much as it looks forward.

I’ll be featuring Steve Roach next Tuesday as an one of 20 Icon of Echoes. This has been an Echo Location, Soundings for New Music.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Un altro sabato insieme allo staff dell’Echoes di Riccione: La sala principale sarà dedicata interamente a Flavio Vecchi per la sua One Night. Lo Stage 02 sarà capitanato da Andrea Barto, Danny Benedettini e Buck.

In attesa del grande evento della Djs Parade with Pecadores.

Still: Echoes, the Echoes Living Room Concerts Volume 15 has arrived. Like all our CDs it’s a perfect Echoes blend of music from pure acoustic works to the extremes of electronic music, with ambient chamber music nestled next to deep space explorations.  The album builds in an arc from Jesse Cook’s sweet “Rain,” with some nice ambient violin by Chris Church giving Jesse Cook’s lilting melody the feel of a wistful, fading memory. The CD peaks dynamically in the middle with Al Di Meola’s “Siberiana,” an energized and nearly symphonic work of global fusion.  Featuring his World Sinfonia band and Di Meola bounces fiery leads off the accordion of Fausto Beccalossi.   And it ends with some gentle acoustic works: Ronn McFarlane’s 21st century compositions for a 16th century instrument, the Renaissance lute,  and Lisa Lynne and Aryeh Frankfurter’s contemplative romantic duo for harp and violin.

Fernwood

Contributing to that arc is a haunting track by Whitetree. “Other Nature” begins with a a solo piano theme from Ludovico Einaudi, but just as you think it’s going to be a poignant piano tune, brush stroked drums, sampled balaphon and electronic ambiences from Robert and Ronald Lippok slip in and take you to another space. That leads into one of the most dynamic tracks on the CD, “Beauxsong” by The Mandrake Project. Based around a rhythm loop, Mandrake Project takes this track into unexpected terrain including electro-symphonic violins, a jazz-flecked electric piano solo that recalls vintage CTI records like Deodato and a ripping guitar solo. It’s a piece that takes progressive rock into the ambient lounge.

Alu

There’s lots of instrument manipulation on Still: Echoes.  Mandrakes’ Rick Nelson stacks his violin, while Matthew Schoening loops and distorts his cello on “Emotional Clockwork.”  I love the circular relationships he creates in this chamber work of melodic flow and drive.  In realtime, he orchestrates a cinematic work of classical dimensions.  But no one manipulates their instrument more than Ben Neill with  his mutantrumpet.  With three different bells, two sets of valves, a mini-trombone slide and electronics, Neill creates an electronic excursion on “Futura” with the trumpet sound playing hide-and-seek between layers of looped textures and distortions.

Al di Meola

The most haunting song on the album may be Alu’s “Recluse,” a song of alienation sung in a little-girl-lost voice with again, some riveting violin work, this time by Hiroyuki Goto, who wraps his instrument across Alu’s electronica groove, alternating pizzicato and arco lines while Alu breaks your heart with her pleas.  Her 21st century lament is a nice counterpoint to the other vocal track on the album, Solas‘ “Mollai na gCuach Ni Chuilleanain,” a traditional Irish aire sung  beautifully by Máiréad Phelan.   The contrast in emotional pain and serenity is striking,  More Celtic music is heard on Aine Minogue’s “The Grove.”  Originally recorded for our Christmas show, Sonic Seasonings, it sounds great in any season with Minogue’s lilting Irish harp and Steve Gorn’s soulful bansuri flute.

Ben Neill

There’s always at least one solo acoustic guitar track on our CDs and there are always a lot of candidates for the slot. This year it went to Canadian finger-style player Antoine DuFour with “You and I,” an intricate and crystalline track.   I love some of the deeply contemplative tracks on the album.  The Marcin Wasilewski Trio from Poland bring an intuitively improvised sound to “The First Touch,” getting that deeply introspective mood you expect from ECM record artists.  But we never let contemplation get in the way of a little exuberance and that’s what your get with Fernwood’s     ”Open Seas.”  Along with the Di Meola track, it’s the pivot point of the album with it’s blend of Indian sitar, bouzouki and mandolin taking us to a high of energy and joy.

Every time I put on Still: Echoes, I feel like I’m being taken on a trip to lands exotic and familiar, a wonderful communion of sound, spirit and musical adventure.  Take the trip yourself.

Still: Echoes is available here.
John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

I watched the amazing ‘Dub Echoes‘ documentary last night.  Features interviews with U-Roy, Bunny Lee, Don Letts, Aswad’s Dennis Bovell and many more. The film traces the origins of dub and its influence on music worldwide. Also included are bits on dubstep, drum ‘n bass and the Brazilian take on Jamaican music.

Trust me, it was that good I was still feeling the dubs in my belly this morning…thanks also to Mr Sherwood who made my cereal move  for breakfast. enjoy.

Electronic Music Icons Play Live in Philadelphia.

Ian Boddy & Mark Shreeve of ARC

In case you haven’t been following all things electronic, the English synthesizer duo, ARC is making their first US appearance ever on November 14th at St. Mary’s Parish Hall on the Penn campus in Philadelphia as part of The Gatherings series.

Mark Shreeve and Ian Boddy are from the second generation of space music artists, musicians who got turned onto electronic music listening to Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and Jean-Michel Jarre.  I remember in 1980 and 81 playing Mark Shreeve’s cassette-only releases,  Phantom,  Embryo and Ursa Major on WXPN’s Diaspar and Star’s End shows in Philadelphia.   In 1982, when Kimberly Haas and I  interviewed him in London for Totally Wired,   he was making his music in one end of his living room while his girlfriend watched TV at the other end.  He told me about Ian Boddy, who I hadn’t heard yet but who would become a favorite during the Echoes era. Shreeve has gone on to release several albums since then, as a solo artist, with his band Redshift and with ARC.

A few years ago when we traveled to London to record a living room concert with ARC, we discovered that Mark Shreeve’s living room isn’t like most of his neighbors in the pleasant middle class borough of Southgate, London. They have couches, easy chairs, maybe a telly.  But Shreeve’s living room looks like a synthesizer museum.  Along one wall is an Oberheim Expander, Arp 2600, VCS3  and the centerpiece of his recent music, a vintage Moog Modular Series 3 synthesizer.

There’s been a movement over the last 15 years among electronic musicians to use old analog synthesizer sounds.  Usually they get these timbres through computer programs called soft synths or virtual synthesizers, but Mark Shreeve prefers the original.

“I mean, it’s a real pain to use,” he groans. “It’s a pain to maintain, it’s difficult to operate, it’s always going out of tune, but in the end, nothing sounds like that big Moog.  Nothing in the synthesizer world can put out bass like that machine can, not even a Mini-Moog can.”

Mark Shreeve Wrestling Moog

Mark Shreeve is a burly man with longish, light brown hair and wearing a black, untucked shirt.  As his arms stretch across the width of his Moog synthesizer it seems like he’s trying to wrestle it down to the ground.  It doesn’t have a keyboard.  Instead, Shreeve twists knobs and moves patch cords to manipulate sound and patterns.

Ian Boddy @ Echoes

The sound he gets is awe-inspiring.  Giant thudding bass lines that start somewhere around Jupiter and end at in your groin trawl under his compositions as cyclical melodies and free-form solos emerge.  You can hear that sound on all of Mark Shreeve’s albums over the last decade, including his recordings with Ian Boddy as ARC.

Along with Shreeve, Boddy is one of the grand old men of English space music.  Like Shreeve, he’s been recording electronic music since the late 1970s. Tall, lanky, with graying hair pulled back in a pony tail and a thick north country accent, he share’s Shreeve’s love for all things analog.

“It’s got a kind of out of control feel,” he enthuses. “A lot of the modern digital instruments you know exactly what it’s going to do each time, and certainly live when you’re playing loud, I always liken the Moog in full flight, it’s like a steam train coming straight towards you, you cannot get out of the way,  it’s got a certain element of danger to the sound.

Ian Boddy has played in the U.S. several times and he runs the DiN label, one of the best and most artfully curated electronic music labels. When Mark Shreeve and Ian Boddy started their duo called ARC, they were looking for a more modern electronic sound, apart from the retro-space sequencer style.

“When we started Arc it was to be a more rhythm based,” admits Shreeve. They’ve moved away from that a bit, although the title track from their album, Blaze, has a drummer and sounds like the “Dragnet” theme in space.

When Mark Shreeve and Ian Boddy ascend the altar at St. Mary’s Church as ARC, they are sure to engage in the kind of music communion that resulted in albums like Arcturus, Blaze, Fracture, Octane, and Radio Sputnik.  Be sure to bring your seat harness and maybe a parachute.  It’s taken nearly 30 years to get Mark Shreeve here.  Who knows when he’ll be back. For more information and advance tickets, go to The Gatherings

ARC will be recording a live session for Echoes on Friday.  Look for that to air in December or January.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Photos of the Day: Echoes of a Modified Reality

Photography by:  Zefram Cochrane

Echoes is a selection of photographs from an ongoing project created by photographer Zefram Cochrane, which he describes as a visual representation of the song Echoes by Pink Floyd.  He explains that he visualizes the project as an audio-video performance, in which the different moods, tensions, inner visions and hallucinations coming from the music are translated into images synchronized with it.

According to Zefram, “Reality is often limited, trivial and tone-less, far from being able to directly represent what is in a creative mind.  So my major effort is both to modify reality to let the latent image impressed on the film match what it was intended to represent in my mind.  As reality modification is the basic brick of my creative process, my work can maybe viewed as photography of ‘ephemeral sculptures.’  Indeed, I feel that this broad definition could fit.”

Pink Floyd: Echoes/Live at Pompeii-Part I

Slide Show: Echoes of a Modified Reality

(Please Click Image to View Slide Show)

Please Share This:

www.findinglosttime.co.uk for details of forthcoming shows and to buy all 12 photos from the Missing Persons series in an individually handmade wallet (sound required, Internet Explorer preferred).

A thousand thanks to Kate for the packaging. Just perfect.

Camel es uno de esos tesoros que aún está por descubrir. Un grupo de virtuosos que mezclaban las técnicas del jazz con la energía del rock y la accesibilidad del pop, logrando un sonido ágil, colorista y variado.

Echoes pertenece al álbum Breathless y realmente es un tema que deja sin aliento. No se lo pierdan, les gustará.

Echoes

Wing and a prayer

]]> http://discoteche-rimini.com/2009/11/05/echoes-sabato-7-novembre-2009/ Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:44:28 +0000 LaJe http://discoteche-rimini.com/2009/11/05/echoes-sabato-7-novembre-2009/

L’Echoes riparte alla grande questo mese di Novembre con un nuovo evento dedicato alla migliore musica da club del momento.

In Stage 01 saranno protagonisti i resident Luca Agnelli e Lele Pasini; in Stage 02 sono Daniele Vescovi, Gas e York a condurre le danze.

Una serata assolutamente da non perdere quella di Sabato 28 Novembre 2009 presso l’Echoes di Riccione! Un evento pieno di musica, in collaborazione con i migliori locali ed organizzazioni italiane di eventi. Arriva ‘Dj’s Parade’.

10 dj, 3 vocalist e tantissima musica per una serata tra le migliori dell’inverno 2009 a Riccione. Ecco i protagonisti:

Steve Lawler
Damian Schwartz
leon
Massimino Lippoli
Francesco del Garda
Lele Pasini
Dandi & Ugo
Nikytek
Franz & Shape
Margot (Pepe e Giaga)
Mcs: Maurizio Monti, Ricky Forni, Pier pecadores.

Echo Location: Baaba Maal

To hear an audio version of this blog with Baaba Maal’s music, go here

Senegalese singer Baaba Maal emerges out of the griot tradition, African story-tellers who usually accompany themselves with the kora.  Legendary griot, Mansour Seck was his childhood friend and mentor, but Baaba Maal is a modern griot.

Baaba Maal:  Of course I think all of the new African musicians are still connected to this old role of playing music but telling the people, the messages are in the African language and they’re trying to change African life on the continent.

Now in his mid-fifties, but looking more like his mid -30s, Baaba Maal has worked with producers like Brian Eno and it was Baaba Maal’s band that inspired the creation of Afro Celt Sound System.  On his new CD, Television, he teams up with singer Sabina Siouba and keyboardist Didi Gutman from the dance group, The Brazilian Girls.

Baaba Maal: What I was looking for was the sound of drum and bass but also the electronic effects that I can’t get from the African instruments sometimes because the African instruments were not built to bring the sound of the wind, the sound of the desert or the sound of anything you hear which is not coming from the music.

Baaba Maal at Echoes

Along with the effects laden guitar of producer Barry Reynolds, Baaba Maal wraps these sounds around gorgeous duets with Sabina Sciubba.

Baaba Maal:   Sabina is a great singer for me because when she sings you can hear a culture, you can hear some pictures you can feel some colors, because she traveled a lot and she speaks like me a lot of different languages.

They sing lyrics that engage in social change and political commentary, but they sing them in several different languages from Pular to Portugese.  But even though the lyrics aren’t understood by western listeners, he feels the voices get the message across.

Baaba Maal:  Yeah, I think the voice can be leading people to an atmosphere where they can feel what I want to talk about.

Baaba Maal didn’t even see a television until he was in his late teens, but it’s a metaphor of social change and communication on his new CD.  Television is out on the Palm Pictures label.  I’ll have an interview with Baaba Maal on Monday’s Echoes.  This has been an Echo Location, soundings for new music.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

La descripción que Baudelaire hace del albatros me evoca el comienzo de una canción de Pink Floyd: Echoes. Su primera imagen es la de los albatros volando en lo alto, como objetos inmóviles colgados del cielo. Y luego el hablante lírico es envuelto por una brisa que trae desde la distancia el eco del pasado, y parece desear convertirse en un albatros para no escuchar en el cielo aquello que constantemente se disgrega en la tierra.

Echoes

Overhead the albatross
Hangs motionless upon the air
And deep beneath the rolling waves
In labyrinths of coral caves
An echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand
And everything is green and submarine

And no-one called us to the land
And no-one knows the where’s or why’s
But something stirs and something tries
Starts to climb toward the light

Strangers passing in the street
By chance two separate glances meet
And I am you and what I see is me
And do I take you by the hand
And lead you through the land
And help me understand
The best I can

And no-one called us to move on
And no-one forces down our eyes
And no-one speaks and no-one tries
And no-one flies around the sun

Cloudless every day you fall upon my waking eyes
Inviting and inciting me to rise
And through the window in the wall
Come streaming in on sunlight wings
A million bright ambassadors of morning

And no-one sings me lullabies
And no-one makes me close my eyes
And so I throw the windows wide
And call to you across the sky

Pink Floyd: Meddle, 1971.

Phil Keaggy & Jeff Johnson’s Frio Suite Tops Echoes Top 25 for October.

October was a strange month for Echoes.  We spent two weeks running down the listeners 200 CDs for 20 Years of Echoes. Great shows.  Not a lot of current music, but we made up for it by playing almost exclusively new music in our regular shows.

Topping the list is our October CD of the Month, Phil Keaggy  & Jeff Johnson’s Frio Suite, an album that’s sounding deeper and more immersive everytime I listen to it.  Jeff Johnson is a master of keyboard orchestration, in fact, raising the bar for electronics in an ambient chamber music setting.  And Phil Keaggy is simply a wonder on guitar, mixing acoustic and electric guitar, merging styles into his own mult-stringed arrangements.  You can read a review of this CD, here.

Right behind them is Airborne by the Danish electronica artist, Aerosol.  I wrote about this earlier, but this album of spacious shoegaze moods and electro atmospheres is still entrancing us at Echoes.

There’s lots of new entries on the list including Baaba Maal’s collaboration with The Brazilian Girls, Television.  It’s a grooving but atmospheric work full of glitchy electronics and the ultra-lounge cool of singer Sabina Sciubba.  DJ Spooky pops in there with the sampledelica of The Secret Song and pianist Christopher O’Riley rises to #11 on the strength of his new cover-tunes album, Out of My Hands.

You can see the complete Echoes Top 25 for October.   It also has links to reviews, Echo Location profiles, and more.

Look next month for Robin Guthrie’s Carousel to top our November list.   Members of the already have this album.  You can join them Echoes CD of the Month Clubhere



John Diliberto ((( echoes )))