Winter Fundraiser : 11 February 2018

STAR'S END Fundraiser - 11 February 2018
If you are a STAR'S END listener, then you are unique, you are enlightened, and you are reassured by the power of this music - and most certainly comprehend the part you play in this quietly amazing effort. We have the unique opportunity to hear things in ways that others cannot - and feel an excitement that we wish to share with the wider world. But have you ever tried to explain STAR'S END to someone who has not ever listened to it? Nor have they any musical reference base with which to compare the genre of Spacemusic? It's not an easy task. One would probably do better drawing on terms and concepts of Modern Art than attempt an explanation of the significance of atmosphere, texture and mood in our most nebulous sub-set of Contemporary Instrumental Music. During a typical broadcast of STAR'S END we move from the heroically abstract, to more minimally defined soundscapes - finding moments of mesmeric stillness all along the way. As contrasting harmonies reveal high principles, stardrive sequencer patterns achieve the forward motion of traveling in place. These STAR'S END sonic encounters encourage deeper understanding of ourselves and of others. This kind of listening demands that we focus our attention and tune out unwanted information - which may facilitate a radical re-imagining of the world. It would be a failure were we to not bring anyone else along to this place where we are now - a musical world beyond ordinary existence and experience. The most important person in this endeavor has always been the listener. For you STAR'S END is a refuge, a space for personal devotion. It's also a place that welcomes an ever-growing worldwide community of emerging musicians - heard right alongside the venerable standards and classics from the earliest days. Giving to public radio is just as meaningful a gesture as it ever was. In making a contribution you are living up to your responsibility as a listener. During the broadcast of 11 February 2018 STAR'S END received $7820.00 from 78 callers. We truly appreciate you commiting to our complex endeavor. Let's please keep this wonderful thing going - and in our listening space every week. Thanks to everyone who tuned in, and then phoned in with a donation to the WXPN/STAR'S END Winter Fundraising broadcast of 02.11.18. Thank You for your generosity and support! Thanks also to those of you from the STAR'S END community who stayed at WXPN through the night answering phones and recording information from donors: Chaka Benson, Neil Cippon, Dana Blechman, Maria Gremmel, Diane King, Dan Marsh, Herb Quick, Ian Staer, Jeff Towne and Syl Von Wright. Please Note: The 02.11.18 broadcast of STAR'S END offered Special Thank You Gifts available to those calling in with a donation made using a valid credit card. Many Thanks to all the artists and labels pitching in their resources to help STAR'S END with fundraising, and of course, Sincere Thanks to all the listeners who called in with a donation (Please see the list below). -Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END - 11 February 2018
Thank You Gifts Special premiums were available for those donating by phone on the 02.11.18 broadcast of STAR'S END, including albums from labels/artists: Groove Unlimited, Stephen Parsick, Projekt, RVNG Int'l and Saul Stokes 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 02.11.18 fundraising broadcast of STAR'S END. More traditional premiums furnished by WXPN were also offered during this broadcast and throughout the Winter 2018 Fund Drive.
STAR'S END 30th Anniversary Anthology CD
To mark 30 years of continuous broadcast of STAR'S END, WXPN 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 was thought to be out of print. However, a limited number have recently been discovered, and made available to STAR'S END donors. • STAR'S END 30th Anniversary Anthology CD - double CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Originally Released in 2007 by WXPN STAR'S END 30th Anniversary Celebration STAR'S END 30th Anniversary CD Anthology (includes audio excerpts)
Seven CD Set - RVNG International
The RVNG International label of Brooklyn, New York releases innovative music by current day practitioners as well as re-issues of lost classics (including the forthcoming anthology Biomorphic Boombox Recordings by The Nightcrawlers) and has provided the 02.11.18 fundraising broadcast of STAR'S END with this substantial collection from its catalogue. • RVNG International Seven-Pack includes one copy each of A Period of Review, Artificial Dance, Trans-Millenia Music, Music is Painting in the Air, An Evolutionary Music, Breadwoman & Other Tales and Tumblers from the Vault as a Thank-You for a $300.00 Credit Card Pledge • Furnished by RVNG International
Three CD Set - 'ramp (Stephen Parsick)
Music by Stephen Parsick is of a machine-hewn darkness, roiling in a dense electronic atmosphere of doom. More difficult to know is from whence this intensity emanates. His albums, released under the more well-known name ['ramp], includes all components of the Spacemusic musical form - technique, sound, color, nuance, phrasing - come together in service to expression. In a kind of self-communion Parsick's richly imagined soundscapes make for moving electro-drama. His sequencer work avoids the obvious motorized pulse of his contemporaries - as the rhythmic lines of blasting bass and metallic interlocking tones better conjure the approach of a leviathan than an optimized stardrive engine. In other places the terrain becomes so alien that the listener will give up trying to grasp something familiar and just trust the composer to lead us safely through the work. This dark music affirms Parsick as one of the bright lights of his generation. He possesses a keen sensitivity for the complex weave of afflicted feelings embedded in this musical genre. Heard separately his albums are compelling works; collectively, they are an electronic masterpiece. Like the light from distant stars, Stephen Parsick's music has existed for some time, but is only now reaching us on Earth. • 'ramp Three-Pack includes one autographed copy each of Traces of the Past, Astral Disaster and Synchronize or Die by 'ramp as a Thank-You for a $120.00 Credit Card Pledge • Furnished by Steven Parsick
Ron Boots - Groove Unlimited
Ron Boots is among the most engaging Electronic Musicians to ever export music from The Netherlands. Since the late 1980s, he has been producing work rooted in the Berlin School, yet reaching far beyond the basic fundamentals of the genre. Combining elements of Contemporary Instrumental, film soundtracks and Spacemusic, Boots' music moves easily between the mainstream and the cosmic. Along with many noted albums, concerts and collaborations, Ron Boots has also been an encouraging force to a myriad of emerging artists. His record label, Groove Unlimited, and music festivals, E-Live and E-Day, have overseen the production of numerous significant releases and concert events. Groove Unlimited has provided the 02.11.18 fundraising broadcast of STAR'S END with a substantial collection of significant titles from its catalogue. Below is a listing of CDs available as Thank-You Gifts: • Ron Boots - Detachment of Worldly Affairs single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Ron Boots - La Caida de Hormigon single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Ron Boots - Area Movement single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Ron Boots - Mea Culpa single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Ron Boots - Dreamscape single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Ron Boots - Tainted Bare Skin single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Ron Boots - Standing in the Rain single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Ron Boots - See Beyond Times Look Beyond Words single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Ron Boots/John Kerr - Offshore Islands single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Ron Boots/John Kerr - Juxtaposition Live single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Ron Boots/John Kerr - Juxtaposition single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Ron Boots/John Kerr - Juxtaposition DVD single DVD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Ron Boots/Frank Dorittke/Harold van der Heijden - Derby! single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Ron Boots/Stephan Whitlan - Seven Days single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Martin Peters - Angels of Nowhere single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Arcane - Automaton single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Serge Devadder - Ganda single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Walter Christian Rothe - Let the Night Last Forever single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • MorPheuSz - Days of Delirium & Nocturnal Nightmares single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • MorPheuSz - Tantalizing Thoughts at the Dawn of Dreams single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • MorPheuSz - Garden Gnomes & Goblins single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Furnished by Groove Unlimited
Dreamtime Return by Steve Roach
Since its release in 1988, Dreamtime Return has earned its reputation as a genuine classic. The two-CD Magnum Opus is perhaps the most important, widely known and highly respected release in Steve Roach's vast body of work. it serves as an essential benchmark within the Ambient-Ethno-Atmospheric genre. Roach's travels in the Australian outback, along with studies of the Aboriginal Dreamtime, and his desert walkabouts in California were the life blood for this recording which still defies the boundaries of genre classification 17 years after its release. Dreamtime Return still sounds like a transmission from the near future and the very distant past. • Steve Roach - Dreamtime Return double CD (comes without booklet) $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Furnished by Projekt
Transmitter by Jeffrey Koepper
Keeping analog sequencer music alive in the 21st century poly-rhythmic sequential melodies of warm, engaging electronics propel Transmitter, an album created live-in-the-studio on vintage synthesizers and sequencers. Organic performances of six new tracks (and one from MantraSequent) glide through evolving epics with a classic 70s feel. Thick synthesizer textures and pulsating rhythms generate and modulate the pieces captured 18 June 2017 at WXPN's STAR'S END Radio. Transmitter is a continuous, pulsating, teutonic-flavored album with hypnotizing textures and throbbing sequences. Utilizing complex layers of analog synths and shapeshifting rhythms, the transistors overlay human synaptic transmitters for an album of new electronic music designed for yesterday and tomorrow. • Jeffrey Koepper - Transmitter single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Furnished by Projekt
Possibilities of Circumstance by Various Artists
Carrying on the tradition of Projekt's unique multi-artist collections, Possibilities of Circumstance is an international gathering of electronic and ambient artists featuring seven previously unreleased tracks by Steve Roach, Tim Story & Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Robert Rich, Ulrich Schnauss & Mark Peters, Larry Fast & Synergy, Jeff Pearce, Nathan Youngblood & Soriah, and Erik Wollo • Various Artists - Possibilities of Circumstance single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Furnished by Projekt
Blue Radiance & Visions by Erik Wøllo
A top-level fantasist, Erik Wøllo provides the song - while his audience provides the story. Blue Radiance (67'17") is made up of 11 expertly delivered, immaculately produced instrumentals. Leaving the listener drenched in wistfulness for air castles or a misty fantasy realm, this music advances along an intriguing dynamic arc. The listener follows Wøllo's composed currents through introspective still states, then to the focused charge of building rhythms - found amidst a highly listenable melodic and harmonic interplay. With synth strings keening through cavernous reverberation, and mounting percussion loops steadily energizing the listening space, authoritative guitar leads course ahead - and then take us back to the slow motion of more fragile forms. The purring energy of Blue Radiance comes out of Wøllo in his convincing guitar craft. Whether in clean plucked lines, fuzzed out tones, or completely synthesized structures, he brings forth an uncommonly expressive intonation. While possessing a certain command of his instrument, Wøllo always remembers to share its space with each track's tempo ornaments. It is this disciplined aesthetic that imbues Wøllo's work with its unique atmosphere, and allows us the freedom to drift off into easy dreams and pleasant mental wandering. This moving music seeks to transport us to a higher place. Not just above the clouds, but somewhere whither we will be left with some hope for the future. • Erik Wollo - Blue Radiance single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Erik Wollo - Visions single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • all two CDs $120.00 Credit Card Pledge • Furnished by Projekt
Emotions Revealed - Dream Tracker
A delayed transmission from the early 1980s. Discovered serendipitously in 2015, these lost tracks created just prior to the Structures from Silence era represent two then-emerging sides of Steve Roach's artistic muse. The track "Emotion Revealed" is a mesmerizing, yearning sequencer exploration connected to the German school of electronic music. The track "Firelight' was his first long-form atmospheric composition of emotional introspection - stillness, silence, and solitude. Two essential touchstones of Roach's sonic origin. The essential ingredients of ancient and contemporary shamanic trance states are fully activated in this highly potent new release. Byron Metcalf carved out a collection of incredible trance grooves for nearly a year, eventually bringing in the prana-infused didgeridoo of Dashmesh Khalsa on every track. Steve Roach joined on in early January 2010 and poured his heart and soul-drenched soundworlds into the six pieces, covering a full range of ecstatic dreamtime flow: rhythm, breath and expansion. The end result is a full-blown dreamtime alchemy of all the elements. The living, breathing percussion, didgeridoo and soundworlds are unified in a single purpose: to open the door out of the ordinary world, initiating the listener into an empowered journey of infinite possibilities for spiritual rebirth, illumination, and transcendence. • Steve Roach - Emotions Revealed CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Byron Metcalf + Dashmesh Khalsa + Steve Roach - Dream Tracker CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • all two CDs $120.00 Credit Card Pledge • Furnished by Projekt
Sleek Nucleus by Saul Stokes
Saul Stokes makes Electronic Music that sounds like it is coming straight out of the wall outlet. Over the years he has become known for his concerts of sonic improvisation and albums of complex atmospheric energy. His work has always been, and continues to be, based on crafting original sonic elements and forms into beautiful realizations of texture and consonance. More recently Stokes has been embracing his internal contrasts. On Sleek Nucleus (54'42") he produces music that registers in both the body and in the mind. Sleek Nucleus is front-loaded with catchy, engaging tracks - but although this CD's songs may be easier to grasp, this accessibility in no way represents a scaling back of ambition. While overlapping rhythms push Sleek Nucleus to the dance floor, for all its heat and beats the most interesting elements transpire quietly. His one-of-a-kind aural ideals bring a unique aesthetic to the field. This album is full of infectious rhythms, kinetic throbbing and subliminal pulse, but the thoughtful listener will also find grainy tones, chirping modulations and fascinating timbres amidst Stokes' melodic sound designs. Never succumbing to formula, Stokes uses ideas and imagination as maps. He is the musician who speaks most directly to our contemporary condition, but has always been too far out there and unclassifiable to gain the following he deserves. Not one of his works are less than perfect. • Saul Stokes - Sleek Nucleus single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • Furnished by Saul Stokes
Vanishing Point 1 & 2 - AirSculpture
Vanishing Point 1 & 2 offers a kind of audio document of AirSculpture's November 2011 regional tour of the USA... and with track titles such as "Infinity Halt", "Jersey Greys" and "Necrophone", it must have been a strange holiday. While Vanishing Point 1 (80'31") presents music from various stops at radio stations and elsewhere, Vanishing Point 2 (109'50") features the recording of AirSculpture's 12 November 2011 performance at The Gatherings Concert Series in Philadelphia. With its two epic main tracks, plus the encore, this album is a wonderful example of this trio's talent for spontaneous composition within the context of an improvised live performance. In a brace of free improvisation AirSculpture flaunts angelic harmonies, just as easily as they mine subterranean frequencies - a faculty which enables unexpected excursions. Either in the restrained propulsion of a slow shuffle, or a whirlwind of sequencer patterns bristling with electrical current, this music's pulse sets the pace of thought. Reverberant Mellotron flutes, horns and strings light out in expressive fanciful flights. Deployed alongside rounded synthesizer leads, their lines solo, then meet and intertwine, in a keening consonant concord. All the while, sonorous passages are building their message above a rumbling motorized meter. But it is more than these musical elements that captures our imagination. From the primitive utterances of a minimally defined netherworld, to charged focused performances of melodic and rhythmic flight, the two volumes of Vanishing Point feature works of passionate intensity, music that could hardly be contained within the room in which it was being played. • AirSculpture - Vanishing Point 1 single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge • AirSculpture - Vanishing Point 2 double CD $100.00 Credit Card Pledge • all two CDs $120.00 Credit Card Pledge • Furnished by AirSculpture
STAR'S END broadcasts every Saturday Night/Sunday Morning from 1:00AM til 6:00AM (ET) on: 88.5FM WXPN Philadelphia, PA 88.7 FM Middletown, York and Lancaster, PA 90.5 FM WKHS Worton/Baltimore, MD 99.7 FM Harrisburg, PA 91.9 FM Hackettstown, NJ 104.9 FM Lehigh Valley, PA W285DH Whitehall, PA and live on the world wide web at: http://xpn.org
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