Rating:
As this is their very first release, Echo Lake are new to the music scene. They are a psychedelic/ambient pop band hailing from London, as their Myspace page claims. With their floods of gritty guitar and distorted echo-y vocals, the band fits the genre pretty well with this debut. At six tracks, it is a long EP, but each track works with the others to weave the listener in and out of a stream of consciousness.
“Sunday Evening” – as the first whispers of heavy guitars waft through the emptiness, it feels like the calm before the storm, almost foreboding. In a sense it is: then some strumming and tambourine follow, and the noise builds upon itself until the silence has been replaced completely by sugary layers of distortion, making you feel like you’ve lost all your senses; perfect in encompassing the band’s sound.
From the beginning of “In Dreams,” you can straight up hear a greater influence of percussion elements. Soft drums kick off, but by no means a shift from the distortion of the first song. The sweet feminine vocals coat everything in a bath of what I want to say is warmth, but in contrast to the instrumentation, it feels cold and almost mechanic in nature.
Next comes “Everything is Real,” which is juxtaposed against the previous song in their titles. However, Echo Lake continues with their airy distortion, belying the title, and making you feel as though nothing is real.
“Memory Lapses,” the fourth song, is complete instrumental song, and at a minute and fifty four seconds long, it is probably the song that could have be avoided when choosing songs to put on your first ever release. Yes, it fits with the two songs before it in a cathartic sense, but it does not bring any new elements to the table.
Next comes “Young Silence,” in which the guitars seem a smidgen less distorted. As for that matter, everything feels a bit clearer. Still, there lingers the omnipresent vocals that push and pull at the song, but there seems to be more clarity. By no means is it a jump in genre; I still feel as though my senses have had reality clouded for them with every jangle of the percussion and every indiscernible lyric.
Lastly is “Buried at Sea,” which is similar to that of the first song in length. Echo Lake likes to surround you with their sound. They open with a long track, and close with one, making you feel like you’ve been dreaming for the approximate twenty minutes that the EP lasts. Lke a dream, it feels as though you’ve been out of conscious for longer than it’s duration.
If you had to choose one song on this EP to listen to, I’d say that you should stick with the first track. Even though it is the longest, it provides a grasp of what this band’s sound consists of, and has the most tangible sound to follow. While I enjoyed this six-song set of work from Echo Lake, it did become a lot of echoes to handle in a sitting. I’m interested to see how their sound translates to the full-length setting. Whether it becomes banal or takes off in a whole new direction is up to them.