Tune in to Yarra Valley FM 99.1 this Thursday (March 1) from 9 pm to catch some great ambient music on SoundScape. You can also get it streamed live from the website.
Our first ambient artist is Billy McLaughlin. Billy is an acoustic guitarist, composer and producer from Minnesota, United States. McLaughlin has won the Minnesota Music Award 5 times. He has recorded on the Narada label. He has released 17 albums.
Billy is of Irish ancestry, and graduated with honors from the
University of Southern California. McLaughlin now resides in his home state of Minnesota where he is
raising his two boys.
In 2005 Billy announced via his website that he is suffering from focal dystonia,
which severely limits his ability to play guitar. He then began teaching himself to
play his distinctive hammering style "left-handed," with the neck of
the guitar toward his right shoulder. A documentary entitled "Changing
Keys" was made about this phase of his career.
He returned to performing
publicly in 2006 both solo and with his band. During his December 2006
concerts with Simple Gifts, the quartet he formed in 2005 to play
Christmas music, he performed the hammering style left-handed and more traditional strumming style right-handed, using separate sets of guitars tuned for the manner in which he was playing.
Our second artist is well known, but perhaps under-played. Bjork is such an eccentric artist that I simply can't do her justice with a short blurb on this blog... I recommend you start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B6rk then go here: www.bjork.com
Our Goon Show this week will be 'The Stolen Postman'.
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