Artist: Echoes
Label: Progrock Records
Release: 2009
Length: 53.08
Rating: 4.5/5
Venezuela. South America! Progressive music. Layered arrangements, a wide and colorful sonic palette. And above all, the thing that really grabs you is the use of fresh ideas, which drive the interesting and distinctive character of Echoes.
Echoes walk the thin dividing line between prog metal and prog rock. So, where do they walk? Everywhere and nowhere. They’re proggers who aren’t weighed down by copying their idols. They start from their own perception, and their original take on it has enough going for it that we can call “Nature/Existence” an album with a representative sound that’s entirely the band’s own.
Impossible, you’ll say. Echoes should have shown up on the market with an album like this 10 years ago. Echoes aren’t gloomy types. They put the emphasis on melody, and through their motifs the arrangements never fall into a dead-end labyrinth of fragmented, complex arrangement-shredding that would demand repeat listens before the material sinks in under your skin. The approach is neo-classical, and yet it’s neither Scandinavian nor Germanic. The Paganini-esque solos, fussily “twanged out” on the guitar, are expected enough, but they keep the main motifs flowing. They’re placed in just the right doses and in just the right spots, so they do their job: loosening up the songs, lifting the dynamics and tastefully teasing even the most spoiled ears of music gourmets.
The strength of “Nature/Eksistence” is that it doesn’t try to win over the masses by firing off light-speed solos, breakneck passages of virtuoso-level chops or crossfire acrobatics in a keyboard-guitar dialogue. None of that here. The music would rather ebb and flow between “warm and cold,” or faster and slower. Above all, Echoes put atmosphere first, along with the waves of shifting moods.
The atmosphere of “Nature/Esistence” is often mystical, and doesn’t even hide a certain transcendental, esoteric streak. Especially in the calmer parts, where the sounds of classical piano and synths play colorfully off each other as the motifs line up and the guitar loses its lead role. The occasional appearance of a “lapsteel” guitar (Rude Awakening) adds to that feeling. Speaking of Rude Awakening, the chorus in particular is close in melody and vocal approach to Germany’s Vanden Plas, but the song takes plenty of detours typical of prog rock, which, as mentioned, come out in the parts where the keyboards step up front.
Echoes invited several guest vocalists onto the album, which adds extra variety and enriches the character of individual tracks. After Rude Awakening, Leaf Motif carries on in a similar vein. The vocals in it are close to the quirks of the Scandinavian approach. They’re totally clean, but also take plenty of room to improvise, which isn’t far from a band like Mind’s Eye. Sample reference points in this song also reach to the arrangements of Symphony X (especially from the era of Twilight At Olympus or Five – The New Methology Suite). Far From Coincidence (later on the album) in particular, in the way it lays down the vocal melody, is close to the musical engraving of Symphony X. The synths often play the role of the orchestra on this album brilliantly and maturely. Winds Of Dread introduces a very successful integration of saxophone.
As is only proper for a progressive approach, we’re dealing with broken rhythms that often flip the mood of individual songs on its head. The fact that the band enjoys “instrumentalizing” is proven above all by a string of instrumental tracks that are compact and melodically pleasing, with turbulent mood swings: Lullaby (the arrangements in it are anything but sleepy), Bonfires and the opening part of Unfair. The album flows between songs so smoothly that the listener never gets a sense of separation between them. These days, that’s a rarity among prog albums.
The instrumental “glue” of Seasons Come To Past, just under two minutes long, points to South American temperament, with tribal undercurrents locking in beautifully with a dreamy neo-classical motif. This is something that shows a kinship between Echoes’ songwriting and Brazil’s Angra. The neo-classicism in Farewell, led by string arrangements, along with the phenomenally arranged closing instrumental, Prologue, full of hidden longing, once again summon the greatness and temperament of early Angra’s output.
There’s hardly any need to stress that the element of unpredictability is present in just the right dose, teasing and unsettling the listener so that they happily explore what’s hiding around every corner of the album. It’s precisely this balancing act between the weight of a melodically crafted motif, the bare yet witty instrumental communication between the building blocks of Echoes’ music, and the red thread that holds even when the band strings together sudden mood switches, that gives “Nature/Existence” the extra character of a top-quality album. One that boasts a keen expressive insight in richly arranged structures and, even more importantly, a recognizable identity all its own. Another strength of Echoes is that their instrumental tracks on this album are every bit as expressive as the vocal-led ones. And they pull that off in a compact and melodically clear way, which is much harder than trying to “hide” completely behind breakneck improvisation, right, you (today oversaturated) old farts Dream Theater?.
After all this, we can conclude that “Nature/Existence” is more than an excellent debut from Echoes, who prove that on the prog metal scene, currently pretty impoverished in terms of expression, there’s still some room left for musical insight, freshness and a warning: on the strength of releases like this, even in times of lesser favor from the critical public, we don’t have to fear for the future of the prog metal genre or (neo) prog rock. At the same time, judging by some of the arrangement comparisons, we can also say there’s quite a bit of revivalism in the character of “Nature/Existence”. Especially revivalism in prog metal. Because the years fly by. Which means that over its 20 years of existence, the genre has finally become a mature and fully defined building block in the mosaic of world rock music.
Lineup
Javier Landaeta – electric, acoustic guitar, 12-string acoustic guitar, “lapsteel”
Antonio Silva – electric, acoustic guitar
Rafael Sequera – electric, acoustic guitar,
12-string acoustic guitar
Alfredo Ovalles – keyboards, percussion, “slide” guitar
Jorge Rojas – bass guitar
Miguel Angel Moline – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Carl Webb – vocals on tracks 2 and 8
Nick Storr – vocals on track 3
Tobias Jansson – vocals on track 6
Pedro Castillo – vocals on track 10
Dave Duffus – saxophone on tracks 9 and 10
Production
Alfredo Ovalles, Stefan Schneider & Echoes
Track list
1. Epilogue (…Is Where We Start)(2:48)
2. Rude Awakening (6:32)
3. Leaf Motif (6:12)
4. Lullaby (4:21)
5. Bonfires (3:21)
6. Unfair (6:15)
7. Seasons Came To Pass (1:45)
8. Far From Coincidence (4:16)
9. Despair (5:33)
10. Winds Of Dread (3:40)
11. Farewell (3:32)
12. Prologue (Where We End…) (4:48)
