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STAR'S END Fundraiser - 8 Oct 06
Jeff Towne, Chuck van Zyl, Gino Wong, John Diliberto, Floyd Miller (seated) | ||||||
The purpose of non-commercial radio is to present music and programming that is worthwhile based on artistic content, and the ability of the content to enhance the life of the listener. For WXPN and STAR'S END, the audience is seen as a community and not as a market segment or as a group of consumers to which advertising messages are delivered (as in commercial radio). STAR'S END is true to this ideal as the show presents music from a diverse range of genres and eras, solely for the enrichment of the listener. The only way to fund this kind of venture is by asking those who use this service - those who listen - for their support.
Public Radio depends on listener support. At 30 years of continuous broadcast on WXPN, STAR'S END is one of the longest running and most renowned shows. On the 10.08.06 program you where asked for your support and to become an integral part of STAR'S END and the presentation of a unique blend of Ambient, Space, Avant-Garde and Chillout music. Thank you to the over 50 of you who called in with pledges totaling $5071. You are helping STAR'S END in its mission to present the timeless and innovative music that makes up each broadcast and have become part of the substance of non-commercial radio. Of the total calls, 33 were from returning supporters while 17 were new, and ranged from as near as Philadelphia and Upper Darby, Pennsylvania to as far away as Calimesa, California and Aukland, New Zealand. Thank You for your generosity! Special thanks also to the STAR'S END listeners who spent the night answering phones: Bill Beck, John Garaguso, Jaki Johnson, Ben Manes, Floyd Miller Chuck Nixon, Bud Schoefer and phoneroom anchor/co-host Jeff Towne. Thanks also to John Diliberto and Gino Wong who stopped by for a live on-air interview about the early years of STAR'S END.
Thanks to STAR'S END listeners Art Cohen and Chuck Nixon for compiling and editing the 10.08.06 fundraiser interview. Special premiums were available for those pledging on the 10.08.06 broadcast of STAR'S END, inclucing albums from the Lotuspike, Nepenthe, Foundry, Synkronos and the DiN label as well as from the Spacemusic artists Radio Massacre Int'l and STAR'S END listener Bill Fieger. | ||||||
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The premiums pictured were donated by the artists and available (in limited quantities) as thank-you gifts to those making a credit card pledge during the 10.08.06 fundraising broadcast of STAR'S END. More traditional premiums, furnished by WXPN, were also offered during this broadcast and throughout the Fall 2006 Fund Drive. | ||||||
| Bill Feiger - Stares to Nowhere | ||||||
   
STAR'S END listener/supporter and local Electronic Musician Bill Feiger (Stares to Nowhere) recently began to weed out his CD collection. Bill thought it best to give his personal numbered copy of Klaus Schulze's out of print 10 CD set Historic Edition to STAR'S END to be used as a fundraising premium. This epic collection contains rare live recordings, previously unreleased compositions, private commissions, recording session out-takes and other obscure works by Spacemusic icon Klaus Schulze. Thanks Bill! • Klaus Schulze - Historic Edition 10 CD set $240.00 or $20.00/month Credit Card Pledge | ||||||
| DiN - Purveyors of Fine Contemporary Electronica | ||||||
Ian Boddy's music consistently sounds fresh; seeming to exist in an eternal now. Continually coming up with new ideas and approaches on each release he is involved in, Boddy is always redefining his relationship with Electronic Music. His innovative contributions to Electronica retain fragments of a time gone by and make for a daring and passionate vision of a present constantly slipping into the past. His album Elemental (52'11") possesses more than just the tricks and technology of its time. Its eight songs of innocence and experience cast a wide resonance - one that speaks from the past to the present. This work emits a significant amount of energy by way of swinging drum grooves and throbbing electro-rhythms. Boddy's deliberate and dramatic pacing construct these forms gradually, adding layer upon layer of enticing arpeggios and coarse-grained loops to a point just prior to where production and tech power would outshine the subtle emotion of this disc. Separating the power tracks are ambient stretches of stark intimacy. In these regions Boddy sets an altogether different mood. Complex synth modulations and uniquely manipulated sound samples lead the listener to a cool introspective space. From these chilled out regions the listener may notice the many peaks and depressions on Elemental, and how Boddy, using a keen musical sense fueled by pure curiosity, ably navigates.
• Ian Boddy - Elemental single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge
• DiN Label Six-Pack $240.00 or $20.00/month Credit Card Pledge | ||||||
| Lotuspike - Progressive Ambient Music | ||||||
Add to the short list of classic Spacemusic albums exploring the relationship between electronic and acoustic music Path of Least Resistance (61'51") by Craig Padilla and Zero Ohms. For this project, Padilla has refined his dense and energetic style nearer to the level of the sleek and serene flute playing of Zero Ohms. Together, the duo explores areas they may not have ventured into on their own. Their music, comprised of dreamy interludes and tonal narratives, is spacious and uncluttered. Both minimal and expansive, the seven tracks on Path of Least Resistance float across and into each other in an infinite, gentle mix - to which Zero Ohms introduces the soft whisper of flutes while Padilla provides a foundation of sustained synthesized notes, chords, and progressions. The album is beautiful, full of commanding synth-borne melodies, warming flute trills and the echo of otherworldly rituals throughout. At times tranquil, somnolent ambient meditation, while elsewhere a pulsing cybernetic entity, the Craig Padilla/Zero Ohms collaboration is locating new paths and branches of sonic exploration.
• Craig Padilla & Zero Ohms - Path of Least Resistance single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge
• Lotuspike Label Six-Pack $240.00 or $20.00/month Credit Card Pledge | ||||||
| Nepenthe Music - Ashley / Story / Roedelius | ||||||
 One year after the flooding of his "second city," composer Dwight Ashley draws us deeper into murky waters with Ataxia. In the liner notes to his third solo release, composer Dwight Ashley divulges his connection with and devastation over the disaster that struck his beloved "second city" of New Orleans during the making of the album. In so doing, he invites the listener to share in an auditory experience that explores both the epic and interpersonal aspects of disaster, disconnection and loss.
While in no wise "about" Katrina (the project was almost halfway complete before the hurricane occurred), with Ataxia, Ashley breaks new neo-expressionist ground in crafting beautifully haunting sonic atmospheres that anticipate a world undone, in which certainty and stability are distant illusions. Those familiar with Ashley's first two releases will recognize his characteristic use of inventive post-industrial sound palettes to create massive, almost orchestral compositions that at once seduce and confront, inviting us to probe the darker side of our humanity - and to lift the veil on ourselves. In a culture characterized by irony, escapism and a misguided tolerance of the intolerable, Ashley's compositions make a startling statement: not only does emperor have no clothes - his skin is missing, too. With Ataxia, he opens our eyes with our ears, and demands we stop pretending not to notice. • Dwight Ashley - Ataxia single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge
Just over a year later, the duo has released The Persistence Of Memory, a 56 minute homage to their pre-, post- and Gatherings concert collaboration. The disc melds studio sessions with tape from the live concert while the music combines Roedelius's sonic abandon and Story's lyrical warmth. Without rhythm, the music twists and shifts in imaginative ways and the listener is soon lost in the thoughts, memories and passions of two extraordinary talents. To produce The Persistence of Memory, Roedelius and Story had to enter the darkness of improvisation. The music here is the shadow cast by the enlightenment gained at concert's close. • Roedelius & Tim Story - The Persistence of Memory single CD (autographed) $75.00 Credit Card Pledge
• Nepenthe Label Six-Pack $240.00 or $20.00/month Credit Card Pledge | ||||||
| Foundry - Where We Build Our World | ||||||
The music of Saul Stokes seems to have two centers. The first accommodates the current ideas of tonal and rhythmic organization while the other freely seeks original timbres outside conventional sonant hierarchies. On his previous several releases, Stokes has navigated the paradox of using technology to express a wide range of human feelings quite well. Vast (62'10") is Stokes' most accessible work so far and strongly forges ahead on paths parallel to both mainstream and experimental music. The seven tracks are intermittently lazy, loose and open yet elsewhere demonstrate a knowing affectivity in their tight arrangement and harmonic contrast. Stokes ushers the concept of musical indeterminacy down to the circuitry level. His hand-built, self-designed tone generators often produce sonically unexpected but esthetically welcomed results. The drifting oscillators, distorting filters and general irregularity inherent in his homemade devices produce a range of chaotic characteristics honed out of commercially manufactured keyboard synthesizers. As high-concept as this may seem, Stokes manages to infuse a sense of wonder into his compositions. Be it in dreamy melodic figures, expanding harmonic progressions or basal body beats, the music of Saul Stokes speaks the electronic infinite word. His work is an exemplary fusion of experimentalism and electronica.
• Saul Stokes - Vast (Foundry) single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge | ||||||
| Synkronos Music - Electronic Music of the Space Age | ||||||
The Philadelphia based Spacemusic duo The Ministry of Inside Things exist outside the confines of the recording studio and in the realm of the live performance. As MoIT, Art Cohen (guitar) and Chuck van Zyl (synths) continue a tradition of bringing an otherwise methodical studio based artform out into the spontaneity of the performance environment. Their second CD Contact Point feels warm and earthy compared to their debut release Everlasting Moment. While their earlier album explored the edges, dynamics and tension of space and atmosphere, Contact Point presents the more unified themes of cosmic, biospheric and macrocosmic interaction. Through the use of environmental field recordings, drifting melodies and soft sonic textures set against submerged drones, billowing sequencer patterns and breezy synth and guitar lead lines, Contact Point depicts the mystery and beauty of telluric ideals. While their music touches on many of the hallmarks of Berlin-School Spacemusic, MoIT bring their own influences and innovation to the process. The result is a sound that is uniquely individual.
• The Ministry of Inside Things - Contact Point (Synkronos Music) single CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge | ||||||
| Radio Massacre International - Look With Your Ears | ||||||
 
• Radio Massacre International - Emissaries double CD $75.00 Credit Card Pledge
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STAR'S END broadcasts every Saturday Night/Sunday Morning from 1:00am til 6:00am (EDT) on:
88.1fm WXPH Harrisburg, PA 90.5fm WKHS Worton/Baltimore, MD 104.9fm Allentown, PA and live on the world wide web at: http://xpn.org/stream.shtml | 
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