Spotted Peccary Music celebrates its 40th Anniversary

In the Echoes Podcast, it’s all about Spotted Peccary Music as the pioneering ambient and electronic label celebrates its 40th anniversary. They have outlasted Windham Hill, Narada, Hearts of Space Records and many more. Artists like David Helpling, Deborah Martin, Chronotope Project, Craig Padilla and Rudy Adrian have been part of a catalog of more than 200 releases, all shaped by the creative vision of Howard Givens and Deborah Martin, the brain trust of the label

Howard Givens: “The goal was to design a sound that left you immersed in the music, not distracted by the fact that it came from a synthesizer.”

They’re celebrating 40 years since they came together in Tucson Arizona. They actually released their first album in 1989, In the Land of Power by Brain Laughter. The Spotted Peccary is an imaginary creature born in the desert southwest. But it’s the name of a consequential label, Spotted Peccary Music. We’ll be talking with them about their genesis and evolution across 40 Years.

SPOTTED PECCARY CDS OF THE MONTH SINCE 2005

April 2026: Craig Padilla & Marvin Allen – Unfolding Skies
January 2026: Deborah Martin & Jill Haley – Rendering Time 
May 2025 CD of the Month: David Helpling and Eric “the” Taylor – Precious Dark
March 2023: Hollan Holmes – Emerald Waters
June 2022: David Helpling – IN
September 2021: Chronotope Project – Gnosis
September 2020: Michael Stearns and Erik Wollo – Convergence
June 2020: John Gregorius – Full of Life
May 2019: Massergy – Fire Opal
December 2013: David Helpling & Jon Jenkins – Found
September 2013: Darshan Ambient – Little Things
December 2011: Darshan Ambient – Dream in Blue
September 2010: David Helpling & Jon Jenkins – The Crossing
December 2008: John Gregorius – Heaven and Earth
July 2007: David Helpling & Jon Jenkins – Treasure
January 2005: Green Isac –Etnotronica

A Meeting in Ambience: Michael Stearns & Robert Rich: The Echoes Podcast

In the Echoes Podcast, two electronic musicians who were part of the original 1980s California new age and space music scenes. Michael Stearns and Robert Rich are icons of electronic music and have recorded their first album ever together, Reunion of Breath and Waves. And they did it in person face to face, synth to synth.

Robert Rich: I’ve been using a term for twenty-five plus years now that I refer to as embodiment, which, having lived my life in Silicon Valley until recently, getting extremely tired of the push towards virtualization going on in technology and feeling that to push back, one needs to find a language of physicality, of non-virtual non-virtuality. I think many of the problems that we’re entering into in our civilization has to do with  a denunciation of physicality, a denunciation of our animal nature.

We hear some deep musical explorations when John Diliberto talks with Michael Stearns and Robert Rich. Michaels Stearns recordings like Planetary Unfolding, Chronos, Encounter and Samsara are albums that influenced a generation. Robert Rich has a charted a singular course through electronic music traverses abstract realms, world fusion and electronic dreams from his breakthrough release, Rainforest through his seven-hour album inspired by his sleep concerts, Somnium to his recent CD of the Month, Travelers’ Cloth. Even though they travel in the same music circles and have known each other for 40 years, they’ve never recorded together until now and the results are a spectacular album, Reunion of Breath and Waves.

Thoughts Through Sound - David Helpling & Scott Reich: The Echoes Podcast

On the Echoes Podcast, David Helpling and Scott Reich go Through the Thought Horizon. They are musicians exploring a philosophical ambience. David Helpling you might know from his many solo works, collaborations with Jon Jenkins and Dark Sky Alliance. Scott Reich is less well-known. He’s a pianist and electronic composer, but he also takes his music to the mystical side on their collaboration, Through the Thought Horizon.

Scott Reich: The word “through,” meaning if you get to tied to your thoughts, you can have a limited experience in life. But if you can go through the thought horizon, then you’re opening up all kinds of new experiences. You can exist beyond thought.

Get ready for a ride into philosophy, the Kabbalah and the Primordial Tower. Join John Diliberto with David Helping and Scott Reich on the Echoes Podcast from PRX.

Mutantrumpet Creator Ben Neill Proposes an Age of Music Democratization: Echoes Podcast

Mutantrumpeter Ben Neill argues for musical democracy now! in the Echoes Podcast.. If you’ve listened to Echoes over the last 30 years, you’ve heard the music of Ben Neill a lot. He plays an instrument called the mutantrumpet which has 3 trumpet bells, a trombone slide, two sets of valves and a lot of electronics. He’s been making music on the edges of electronica since his 1995 album, Green Machine. In the main part of the Echoes Podcast, I’m not going to talk to Ben about the trumpet, but about his new book, Diffusing Music – Trajectories of Sonic Democratization, Ben Neill talks about a history of opening up music to everyone, from the Futurists to Fluxus to AI. You don’t need traditional skill to make music anymore.

Ben Neill: Yeah, de-skilling and re-skilling, so that technology takes over and makes it so that a lot of the skills that were required are just not valid anymore or they’re not needed anymore.

I’ll be talking to Ben Neill about his book which has just been released in a much more affordable paperback edition.  As a bonus, after the regular interview, we’ll have Ben demonstrating his mutantrumpet.

Hear the Ben Neill and his mutantrumpet in a live Echoes performance here.

Hammock's Psychedelic Revelations: The Echoes Podcast

The ambient guitar duo Hammock have become darlings of both the post-rock and ambient scenes. Yet, although they may attract a hipster audience, their music is imbued with Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson’s evangelical upbringing and their subsequent rejection of much of that doctrine. It informs  alot of their new album, The Second Coming was a Moonrise.

Hammock’s Marc Byrd: In one Christian school that I grew up in, Wednesdays, we wore a pin-on tie with an eagle, an American flag, and a Bible printed on it. So I got a good dose of Christian nationalism too. I got suspended from that school several times.

That’s Marc Byrd of Hammock. I talk to them today about an album inspired by an acid trip, religion, politics and a love of sonic landscapes on Echoes.

The Second Coming was a Moonrise is Echoes June CD of the Month. Read John Diliberto’s review.

An Electronic Revolution-Tonto's Expanding Head Band 55th: The Echoes Podcast

It has been 55 years since Tonto’s Expanding Head Band first took flight on the 1971 album, Zero Time. Recorded on their electronic array called TONTO, it predated by years the sequencer-driven recordings of Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra, Klaus Schulze’s Picture Music and Kraftwerk’s Autobahn. It was an album of thudding bass grooves, melodic electronic flights and deep ambient expanses, long before any of that became part of the contemporary electronic music vernacular.

You may have never heard Zero Time, but its influence reverberated throughout space music and popular music. Look at the credits on ‘70s albums by Quincy Jones, The Isley Brothers, Minnie Ripperton and many others and you’ll see the names of Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, the creators of TONTO. But their best known contribution remains Stevie Wonder’s brilliant mid-70s quartet of recordings that began with Music of My Mind.  They were all midwifed by Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff along with the TONTO synthesizer.

But it’s the album, Zero Time, that remains their most impressive and groundbreaking release, creating a new form of music that would be expanded upon by the aforementioned German artists, In the Echoes Podcast we hear an interview with Cecil and Margouleff recorded in 1996.

Read John Diliberto’s deep dive into Tonto’s Expanding Head Band.

The Physics of Love-KÁRYYN: The Echoes Podcast

In the Echoes Podcast, an extraordinary artist for you, KÁRYYN. She is an electronic singer-songwriter of Armenian descent who came up through the experimental world studying with electronic and Deep Listening composer Pauline Oliveros.  She has released her second album, Physics Universal Love Language (PULL). Her music is centered around her voice.

KÁRYYN: My voice is my first instrument and I’m not trained as a singer so it’s not about singing licks, it’s not about that, you know, it’s not traditionally what would sound beautiful. I use my voice to shape whatever I’m trying to sing, so whatever I’m trying to express and that is what the voice is for.

The fact is, she does sing beautifully. Her voice goes many places when John Diliberto talks to KÁRYYN on Echoes from PRX.

Will Ackerman on Windham Hill and Philip Aaberg, R.I.P. in Echoes Podcast

Today we were just going to bring you our interview with Will Ackerman, the founder of Windham Hill Records as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of that label. But then we got the news that pianist Philip Aaberg, a stalwart Windham Hill artist, had left the planet on May 23. So first we will hear our Will Ackerman interview but after that, I’ve got our last interview with Philip Aaberg.

Will Ackerman is not only a distinctive guitarist with several signature works, but a producer and collaborator who brought us George Winston, Liz Story, Michael Hedges and many more on the Windham Hill label. He released the dbut album, just to give copies to friends. That album, The Search for the Turtle’s Navel (now titled In Search of the Turtle’s Navel) He’s going to tell us the story of all that.

Then we go to one of the artists Will discovered, pianist Philip Aaberg. His albums, High Plains and Out of the Frame were Windham Hill Classics. Phil appeared on Echoes twice, performing live. We’ll hear Phil from an early 2003 interview where he took us through his career and influences.

Read John Diliberto’s Tribute to Philip Aaberg

The Complete Derek Shulman Interview-The Tale of a Gentle Giant in Echoes Podcast

Almost everyone is familiar with the big progressive rock groups of the 70s like Yes, Genesis, King Crimson and Emerson Lake and Palmer. But one of the bands bubbling just under the surface was Gentle Giant. To true aficionados of the progressive rock genre they were icons. Early this year, the lead singer of the band, Derek Shulman, released a memoir, Giant Steps. At the time I interviewed Derek and produced a nice feature from that on Echoes and in the Echoes Podcast. But there was a lot of good stuff in there that got left out so today in the podcast, I’ve got the complete interview. It includes the influence of Elton John on the band, who they actually turned down as a possible member, their interaction with English gangsters along with Black Sabbath, and bouncing on John & Yoko’s bed at Abbey Road Studios. We also talk about his transition to the corporate side of music. And then there is the outhouse.

Derek Shulman: Certainly in Portsmouth, for a long time, we had an outhouse, no bathroom. So, you know, getting up in the middle of the night to go outside for a pee or whatever you have to do, That was not a lot of fun, especially in the middle of winter. But yeah, that’s how I grew up.

Gentle Giant was a family affair, centered by Derek Shulman on vocals and saxophone, Ray Shulman on violin and Phil Shulman playing wind instruments and trumpet. They all actually played a lot more. They were joined by guitarist Gary Green and the classic edition of the band included drummer John Weathers. They started out as Simon Dupree and the Big Sound and had hits in England under that name.  But their transformation to Gentle Giant was revolutionary.

Behind Derek Shulman’s clarion call vocals, Gentle Giant layered intricate melodies, complex rhythms and multi-sectioned songs. We all thought this was high-art, not that derivative, corporate produced pop. But while we were being snobby elitists, Shulman took a turn into the corporate rock world and signed Bon Jovi, Nickelback, AC-DC, and more. This is an extended version of our feature which was broadcast this past Monday. We’ll hear about Derek Shulman’s journey from the outhouse to the executive suite.

Hear the produced version of this interview with music.
Hear our interview with Gentle Giant’s Derek Shulman & Gary Green from 2013

From Apes to Humanity - Felsmann & Tiley: The Echoes Podcast

In the Echoes Podcast, techno DJs Felsmann & Tiley take the ambient classical pill and dial up a cinematic electronic sound on their second album, Protomensch. They come in from the cold of hard techno for a warmer, more hypnotic sound that is a long way from the dance floor.

Patrick Tiley: “We were a bit more youthful and energetic then for DJing club music and now we’re sort of making more music for the reclining chair.”

Their new conceptual release, Protomensch, manages to be hard hitting and political as well as poignant and thoughtful as they explore the idiocy and ingenuity of mankind. We talk to Felsmann & Tiley in the Echoes Podcast

Craig Padilla & Marvin Allen's Post-Rock Space Music for the 21st Century: The Echoes Podcast

In the Echoes Podcast electronic artist Craig Padilla and guitarist Marvin Allen. They have released a quartet of albums that traverse the world of ambient, progressive rock and psychedelic music. Their latest is Unfolding Skies. It is Echoes April CD of the Month.  Its cosmic sounds were all recorded in Craig Padilla’s living room.

Craig Padilla: We did the first song, and when it was done, Marvin goes, “Padilla, make another sequence.” And so he and my wife would go into the kitchen and just talk and I’d be out here just working on some other song ideas and then he’d go, “Ooh, that sounds good.”

Craig Padilla and Marvin Allen. You can hear so many influences in their music:  Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, Steve Hackett, Robin Trower, and more. But they distill these influences into their own post-cosmic brew, a meeting of psychedelic moods with inventive synthesizer arrangements and tastefully pyrotechnic guitar. It’s post-rock space music for the 21st century.

They talk about their journey and reveal the story behind “Jammin’ with Buddha” in the Echoes podcast.

Read John Diliberto’s review of Unfolding Skies and explore the Echoes CD of the Month Club.