| STAR'S END Fundraiser - 19 February 2012 | ||||||
 If the world took note of the STAR'S END 30th Anniversary a few years ago, the attention was due in part to the event's profound unlikelihood. It is rare in the world of broadcasting to have a program remain on the air (and relevant) for over 30 years, yet WXPN boasts several such radio shows in its schedule. Over its 36 years STAR'S END has been featuring works from an enormous cross-section of musicians. Connecting the different generations, classes and nationalities is the enduring beauty and spirit present in this most unique music. But just as important as the show's musical endeavors are the people listening. While the works of musicians have helped shape STAR'S END, the audience has defined it. The show has always been about making sleep more interesting yet STAR'S END has become more than just an escape from the everyday. Its mission is to provide listeners with an enriching experience - one that will tap into new and different parts of the imagination. But ultimately the hours of these broadcasts belong to you and may be the only time during the week where nothing more is asked than to listen... sleep... dream... STAR'S END does want you out there listening every week, but not as part of a passive experience. During the 02.19.12 broadcast you were asked to do more than just tune in and listen; you were asked to call in and pledge! Your generous act funds public radio station WXPN, supports STAR'S END and indicates that you are among a select few who are serious about this unique radio show and the amazing range of music it presents. Thanks to the 56 donors responsible for the $5122 brought in on this fundraising broadcast - a show record! Special Thanks to phoneroom volunteers: Ken Anderson, Art Cohen, Walt & Cindy Crowder, Kathy Jeffries, Barry Landis, Dan Marsh, Bud Schoefer and Jeff Towne.
On Public Radio we are doing things found no where else in broadcasting. With a contribution you are doing your part to keep this wonderful thing going - and in your listening space every week. Thank You! -Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END - 19 February 2012 | ||||||
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Thank You Gifts
Special premiums were available for those pledging by phone on the 02.19.12 broadcast of STAR'S END, including albums from labels DiN, Northern Echo, Projekt, as well as the STAR'S END 30th Anniversary Anthology CD from WXPN.
The CD premiums pictured were donated by the artist/label and available (in limited quantities) as thank-you gifts to those making a credit card pledge by phone during the 02.19.12 fundraising broadcast of STAR'S END. More traditional premiums, including the STAR'S END 30th Anniversary Anthology CD furnished by WXPN, will also be offered during this broadcast and throughout the Winter 2012 Fund Drive.
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| City 21 by Radio Massacre International | ||||||
Radio Massacre International is a trio of English musicians (Duncan Goddard, Steve Dinsdale, and Gary Houghton) known for their extended concerts of epic aural excursions. Over the course of their career they have developed a distinctive style set on transcending individual consciousness. Their performances are largely improvised and often veer off into areas dictated by mood, circumstance or whim. RMI's recorded output reflects the diversity and complexity of this work, which is often compared to that of the Berlin-School of cosmic music that emerged in Germany during the 1970s. But RMI is not simply re-creating the music of this era, they are further exploring and contemplating the expressional mode and the instruments that made it possible - in hopes of realizing new ideas. Their album City 21 is for the most part a studio realization and used as the soundtrack to the film of the same name.
• Radio Massacre International - City 21 single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge
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| Silent Currents - Erik Wøllo | ||||||
Over the years STAR'S END has hosted many live to air concerts, usually with artists fresh from The Gatherings Concert Series stage. The act of playing a second more intimate concert after a public event provides a sense of summation to a powerful experience. But the unique radio venue also offers musicians a space for discovery, as they turn from focused music for The Gatherings community to atmospheres for an audience each in their own dream space. Erik Wøllo enthusiastically embraces this idea, using his on-air concerts to explore moods and zones only found in the late hour and unconventional situation. With each amazing performance in Philadelphia his art advances. Every outing seems to raise the music to a new plateau. There is an interesting energy arcing through Silent Currents. During his STAR'S END sessions Erik descends into himself, realizing music completely in the moment. The resulting new works are wonderful expressions of ambience, texture and this artist's potent sense of drama - as Erik Wøllo creates space, then fills it with ever evolving sound.
• Erik Wollo - Silent Currents double CD $100.00 Credit Card Pledge | ||||||
| Journey of One - Steve Roach | ||||||
A pioneer in contemporary electronic music, Steve Roach is a leading innovator in the atmospheric/tribal/ambient music world. Drawing on the beauty and power of the earth's landscapes, Roach creates lush, meditative soundscapes. His music exists outside conventional boundaries and is restless in its search for new sounds that connect with an ancient source. Over the past 20 years, Roach has been a rare constant as live performer on the international electronic music scene. With over 50 albums to his credit he continues to set the standards by which this evolving genre is measured. In spite of his music having been borrowed from so many times, Roach still has the power to inspire and move. Journey of One is a live album from Roach's tribal ambient era circa 1996.
• Steve Roach - Journey of One double CD $100.00 Credit Card Pledge | ||||||
| The Passage by Sam Rosenthal | ||||||
The Passage is a foray into the realms of pure ambient from Black Tape for a Blue Girl founder/songwriter Sam Rosenthal. The two pieces submerge the listener in a sustaining environment of warm electronics, minimalist proceedings and a yearning string theme. The vast field of harmonious resonance moves gradually and languidly, time stretching and evolving, rolling back in on itself. The Passage also features violinist Vicki Richards.
• Sam Rosenthal - The Passage single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge | ||||||
| Conundrum by Klaus Hoffmann-Hoock & Berhnard Wöstheinrich + Arcadia Borealis by Erik Wøllo & Berhnard Wöstheinrich | ||||||
 
Good collaborations can bring out latent voices. On Conundrum (56'43") the duo of Klaus Hoffmann-Hoock and Bernhard Wöstheinrich speak in a language of unexpected affinities and easily traced influences. For Hoffmann-Hoock it is Eastern thought and 60s psychedelia while technology and abstract expressionism inform Wöstheinrich's contributions. Working together on Conundrum the duo manages to combine their individual musical traits into a cohesive sonic statement. Electronic beats, pops and squeaks drop in hard, then relax beneath ethereal guitar leads. The cerebral energy of the rhythms activates the mind as languid melodies play to the heart. Prog-Rock influences inundate Hoffmann-Hoock's guitar riffs. Drifting glissando clouds, slow E-bow solos, breathing chords and straight-ahead liquid leads flow amidst Wöstheinrich's electronica flare. With their hot beats and cool guitar this duo conjures up multi-faceted inventions both cosmically abstract and molecularly detailed.
Bernhard Wöstheinrich speaks in his own musical voice. Providing a unique perspective in his increasingly frequent collaborations in the DiN label catalogue, Wöstheinrich has quietly been playing with and influencing some of our community's most interesting talents. On Arcadia Borealis (63'23") Erik Wøllo takes his turn. His introspective approach to music results in the distillation of emotion while Wöstheinrich's private symbolism represents an urge for self-expression and release. The musical arc of this CD moves from curiously beautiful on the opening tracks to beautifully curious on the closing few. Each of the 12 pieces is fully formed and thoughtful. The more energetic songs are driven by firm beats amidst simultaneously sounding musical lines. With harmonies trailing behind melodies these shimmering works draw their power from the arctic regions upon which this music is based - informing the dramatic outline of Arcadia Borealis. As this album plays out it slows down, with each work disintegrating into swirling unanchored abstractions of sustained tonal ambiance. An intriguing listening experience, Arcadia Borealis benefits from great conceptualization, arranging and musicianship. Together this duo pulls off their first collaboration with startling brilliance.
• Moire & Praposition two CDs $120.00 Credit Card Pledge - one CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge | ||||||
| Moire by Ian Boddy & Berhnard Wostheinrich + Praposition by Subsonic Experience | ||||||
 
Bernhard Wostheinrich and Thorsten Niestrath are the duo of Subsonic Experience. Their CD Praposition - a rough snapshot of intuitive improvisation at work - is the result of a weekend recording session in late 2000. The music was all played live on mostly cheap synths and abandoned floor effects pedals. Most notably is Niestrath's amazing synth organ work. His wonderful lead lines and colourful organ clusters are found on all tracks of the album. Wostheinrich's duties on the other hand levitated toward keeping the sequencers running, generating endless variations of tones and textures in real time. Recorded with very basic means, but mixed and mastered using state-of-the-art technology, Moire is the perfect amalgamation of musicianship with a traditionalists feel for early EM, all overseen by modern production techniques.
Moire is DiN label founder Ian Boddy interacting and collaborating in a creative partnership with electronic improvisationalist Bernhard Wostheinrich. The gestation of Moire has been a multifacted process and the resulting music spread over 10 tracks captures both the detail and complexity of arrangement possible with modern music technology as well as the spontaneous nature of the original improvisations. Sonically it effortlessly ranges from classic analogue sequencer lines to deep, metallic atmospheres through to full on drum & synth work-outs. The majority of the tracks employ organic analogue arpeggiations together with unusual percussive loops which forms the backbone of the music. Ethereal ambient textures provide a suitably surreal counter-balance to the solidity of the rhythmic structure which creates a constant sense of flow and change within the compositions.
• Moire & Praposition two CDs $120.00 Credit Card Pledge - one CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge | ||||||
| React by Robert Rich & Ian Boddy + Dervish by Markus Reuter & Ian Boddy | ||||||
 
For Robert Rich & Ian Boddy, their third collaboration is the result of their first live meeting. React (63'52") is a document of this duo's performance at the STAR'S END 30th Anniversary Celebration Concerts held in Philadelphia in June of 2007. The 11 tracks include live versions of pieces from their two earlier studio CDs Lithosphere (2005) and Outpost (2001), as well as new works conceived especially for their first outing. As with their previous releases, React does not merely occupy the middle ground between two talented musicians. It is a surreal, fanciful and at times intense work that provokes and impresses with its conceptual complexity. Rich's intoxicating glissando guitar and echoing flute melodies inhabit the ether while Boddy produces deep rumbling and neuron disabling effects across a shifting digital terrain. Ravaging his keyboards, sounds stretch inside out as intricate rhythms assemble, build and change. From space-tribe drumming and wet bassline punch, to soft moonlit chords and floating synth atmospheres, this work is panoramic yet detailed. Rich and Boddy move through an interior landscape with a unanimity that usually comes with years of experience - and ask the listener to stop reacting to the external world, and to explore the internal one.
Dervish was inspired in part by the musical theories of Olivier Messiaen. There is a terse angularity to the compositions whose unexpected textures include a string quartet, a recorder player and a guest appearance by King Cimson dummer Pat Mastello. The creative methods used in realizing Dervish have pushed Boddy and Reuter into makedly different musical places, forcing each to change their typical approach. The result is a mirage of aural shades and colors in which it is impossible to distinguish the respective rolls of the players.
• React & Dervish two CDs $120.00 Credit Card Pledge - one CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge | ||||||
| Yolo by Tetsu Inoue + Surface Tensions by Surface 10 + The Art of Sacrifice by dbkaos | ||||||
  
With over 40 albums to his credit, including collaborations with Bill Laswell, Atom Heart, Pete Namlook and Jonah Sharpe, Tetsu Inoue has established himself as a musician equally comfortable in the contrasting worlds of ambient, sound installation and computer music. Intriguing and mysterious Yolo dissects a combination of random synthesized sounds and field recordings into fragments and particles which are then connected into an audio patchwork that constantly mutates and renews itself.
Dean De Benedictis (aka Surface 10) is a Southern California based composer / producer / conceptual artist and electronic musician. In his music he melds interests in a variety of musical styles ranging from experimental electronica to ambient, IDM to progressive jazz and beyond. As Surface 10 De Benedictis brings a great range of influences to the 11 track melting pot of his CD Surface Tensions. So many finely crafted sonic moments arise on this album that the listener remains constantly engaged in the unfolding panoply. Made up of more than mere techno-trickery, De Benedictis infuses the music with an emotional content that defies its cutting edge methodology by projecting a series of personal sonic moments and experiences onto the sonic canvas. Art of Sacrifice is the debut CD by dbkaos - otherwise known as sample CD producer Dave Hickman. This background enables him to compose with a well-crafted vision into the future of synthesis. Lush ambient textures are overtaken by frenetic, complex sequencers. Trance like percussive sections give way to surrealistic, dream-like passages. The overall album feels like a journey - with the listener forging their own individual path. The Art of Sacrifice bridges the gap between Electronic Music's analogue ancestry with cutting edge digital soundscapes.
• Yolo & Surface Tensions two CDs $120.00 Credit Card Pledge - one CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge | ||||||
| STAR'S END 30th Anniversary Anthology CD | ||||||
To mark 30 years of continuous broadcast of STAR'S END, WXPN has released the STAR'S END 30th Anniversary Anthology CD. This double CD contains over 120 minutes of live music from 11 renowned artists. The unique performances were culled from on-air in-studio radio concerts by some of our community's greatest talents. Included on the disc are previously unreleased live selections donated by: The Ministry of Inside Things, Orbital Decay, Ian Boddy, AirSculpture, Radio Massacre International, Robert Rich, Rudy Adrian, Jonn Serrie, Jeff Pearce, Saul Stokes and Steve Roach.
The STAR'S END 30th Anniversary Anthology CD is available for a $60 donation to WXPN, which includes membership and all of its benefits. Current WXPN members can receive the STAR'S END 30th Anniversary Anthology CD for a $25 donation. Access the online Pledge Form to support WXPN and aquire your CD. Please indicate "STAR'S END 30th Anniversary Anthology CD" in the comments box. Call
CDs are currently being sent out to donors by the WXPN Membership Department - which may be reached by telephone at: Thanks very much for your support!
STAR'S END/XPN 2011 Members Concert
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STAR'S END broadcasts every Saturday Night/Sunday Morning from 1:00am til 6:00am (ET) on:
and live on the world wide web at: http://xpn.org/stream.shtml | 
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