Murcof (a.k.a. Fernando Corona) has had a reaction to the
shallow gloss of techno music. It is the album UTOPIA (75'41").
Murcof may be from the world of techno, but his work is not of it.
His album UTOPIA is everything mindless club music is not;
adventurous and thought provoking, warm and emotional,
infectious and fun, and experimental and imaginative throughout.
The 11 tracks vary in content. The quiet pieces portray a spooky
tenderness - perhaps due to the spaciousness and scale these
pieces evoke, or the hint of a pre-existing emotional connection
to the samples of acoustic instruments. The energy pieces are a
cerebral romp. With a rhythmic foundation made up of layers of
looping sounds - pops, clicks, digital noise, spliced and
synchronized forward and back - the music grinds on
machine-like. Where the tempo shifts between timing
signatures, the mind contemplates this music's meaning
leaving the body to search for a musical pulse. Elsewhere
Murcof manipulates cast off artifacts into approximations of
identifiable tones and forms. These sound bites and samples,
out of their original context, collide rhythmically beneath
electronic sighs of smooth, breathing harmonies. Murcof's
imaginative studio techniques include mixing in hiss, glitches
and noise, as well as turning samples inside out rendering
them unrecognizable. By creaking, bending and flexing the
samples, these tones can be extended downward into the
inaudible range just as easily as they can metamorphose into a
lilting melody or metronomic snare hit. Is the result a spacey chill
or a chilly space? Not sure. But UTOPIA's virtue is that it is too
minimal and gritty for gleaming mainstream tastes, but perfect
for dancing (or dreaming) in the long dark of night.

Tune in to STAR'S END this weekend for music from UTOPIA,
the new album from Murcof

For more on Murcof, access: http://www.murcof.com

For more on UTOPIA, access: http://www.theleaflabel.com

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Lanterna live on STAR'S END

Lanterna's music wanders the front line of Ambient Americana.
As Lanterna, Henry Frayne connects his achievements in
post-punk and shoegazer "dream pop" with moods drawn from
spaghetti westerns and ambient isolationists. Frayne's guitar
work has been cited as being more expressive than some
songs with lyrics. His albums of primarily guitar-based
instrumentals move between the soothing, the unsettling and
the fiery. Thought of as "instrumentals that speak", Lanterna
provides an entire landscape of sound, created with just a guitar.

Lanterna plays live on the 10.17.04 broadcast of STAR'S END.
Tune in this weekend.

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Lanterna makes his Philadelphia concert debut at The
Gatherings Concert Series on Saturday 16 October 2004 within
the reverberant church sanctuary of St. Mary's Hamilton Village,
3916 Locust Walk on the Penn Campus in West Philadelphia.

For details, access: http://www.thegatherings.org

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STAR'S END broadcasts every Saturday night/Sunday morning
from 1am-6am (EDST) on:

88.5fm WXPN Philadelphia, PA
88.1fm WXPH Harrisburg, PA
90.5fm Worton/Baltimore, MD
104.9fm Allentown, PA

and live on the web...

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Chuck van Zyl
Host of STAR'S END Ambient Radio
http://www.starsend.org