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Echo Us — The Windsong Spires
(Absolute Probability EU08.04AP, 2021, CD / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2021-09-10

The Windsong Spires Cover art Those familiar with any of the other Echo Us albums can rest assured that there’s been no drastic change in style. Looking over my past writing, you could characterize the journey of Ethan Matthews as starting out in an Alan Parsons kind of area, adding some Celtic influences, and progressing into Mike Oldfield territory. With The Windsong Spires I hear even more of the Mike Oldfield similarity, though it’s applied to a set of eleven tracks, only one of which tops ten minutes, which are generally focused on vocals. It helps that Matthews sometimes takes on a tone and a style of vibrato for his lead guitar lines that is very Oldfieldian. The other factor present is what you might call “cinematic production,” with many moments of big drum sounds treated with expansive reverb — the kind of sound you hear on most big-budget movie soundtracks these days. Luckily, Matthews doesn’t overdo it on this front, and avoids sounding like a knock-off Hans Zimmer score. I could make other comparisons at various times: for example, “Squals” reminds me a bit of something that might have appeared on a late-70s Steve Hackett album. There are still some delicate moments featuring the acoustic strings so prevalent on the previous album, like the hammer dulcimer on “Fly You Home,” but they’re much less dominant. The main factor of the album’s sonic palette is its expert layering of sounds, so that you might hear a very soft synth pad drenched in reverb, an organ-like sound with some vibrato, harp-like plucking, a soprano voice, and trebly guitar arpeggios all stacked over a rhythm part that blends conventional-sounding drums with glitchy samples, and a bass part that’s sometimes piano-like and sometimes a trendy 808-style bass. All of these sounds will vary in prominence as a track progresses, for a constant influx of gradual change. The Windsong Spires is a lush banquet for listeners who love melodic music which presents subtle complexity rather than flashy technique.

Filed under: New releases, 2021 releases

Related artist(s): Echo Us / Ethan Janais

More info
http://echous.bandcamp.com/album/the-windsong-spires

 

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