Flow State

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -54:18 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. On today’s episode of Across the Horizon, host Bob Holmes of the band SUSS is joined by Canadian composer Sarah Davachi, who brings a playlist of her prog rock favorites including Genesis, Yes, King Crimson, and more. If you have wondered about the connections between neo-classical minimalism and ‘70s prog rock, this show is especially for you.

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -10:00 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Today’s mix opens with Ludwig Göransson’s piece “Sirens” from The Odyssey. There’s new ambient by Francesca Heart, Exportion, Sarah Davachi, and Carmen Villain. We revisit a Harold Budd track from his score for I Know This Much Is True. There’s an incredible cover of Led Zeppelin’s “The Rain Song” by Irish pedal steel guitarist David Murphy.

Today we’re listening to and remembering William Orbit, an English keyboardist and producer from London. We’ve recommended his music twicebefore.

It’s Friday so we’re listening to something slightly more upbeat. Today we’re listening to Carmen Villain, a Mexican-Norwegian musician originally from Michigan. We previously recommended her music in 2021. She grew up in Oslo, where she’s now based. She began making music in the mid-2000s, starting with guitar-driven songs, and later pivoting to pure electronic music.

Today we’re listening to Patrick Gleeson, an American synthesist and composer from Seattle. Born in 1934, he started playing piano at age six and gravitated toward jazz, eventually discovering the Buchla Box synthesizer in the ‘60s in a Bay Area music studio.1 He was inspired by Wendy Carlos’s 1968 record, Switched-on Bach, and her project of realizing classical and jazz standards through novel electronics.

Today we’re listening to Sarah Davachi, a Canadian composer, organist, and keyboardist based in Los Angeles. This is the seventhtimewe’rerecommendinghermusic (she holds the Flow State record). She grew up playing piano, and then studied music and philosophy in college.

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -10:00 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Today’s mix opens with a new track from harpist Lara Somogyi’s new album, a [time] patterned, which is a collaboration with cellist Clarice Jensen. It continues with several longform ambient pieces by anthéne, Hayes Bradley, and Charlemagne Palestine. We play a piece from John Carroll Kirby’s new solo piano album.

Today we’re listening to Toshphic., a Japanese ambient musician from Tokyo. The project is from Toshiki Sakuma, a sound artist who favors a live composition approach using guitar, effects pedals, and synths. He began the Toshphic. project in 2021, and since then he’s put out half a dozen albums and plenty of singles and EPs. We’re starting with the latest one, A Portrait of Distance, a pure ambient record that came out in July.

It’s Friday so we’re listening to something more upbeat. Today we’re listening to Carl Craig, an American electronic musician and DJ from Detroit.

Today we’re listening to The Durutti Column, a post-punk band from Manchester, UK. We last recommended them in 2020. The group was assembled in the late ‘70s, ironically calling their debut 1980 album The Return of the Durutti Column. Guitarist Vini Reilly had joined the previous year, who ended up leading the group and making it his own to the present day. In fact, The Durutti Column just released their first album in about 15 years, Renascent, a spare and tender record by Reilly, now age 73.