I Shit Music

So as every music geek on the planet falls deeper and deeper into the marvelous new My Bloody Valentine album, I’ve heard several comments from people saying they haven’t heard anything like it in 20 years. Well, that’s not exactly true people. Sure, nobody can touch MBV at being MBV, but the shoegaze genre of electric drone that they spawned has given way to some pretty fucking good bands over the years. In fact, the release of their new album reminded me about this record that landed on my desk lat year from San Francisco’s Echodrone. What initially caught my eye about this record, Bon Voyage, was the fact that it showed up in my mailbox one day with none of the postage stamped on it. Meaning one of two things – either it went through the entire postal system with nobody ever marking it official, or these guys just crept by my home one day and dropped it off. Either way, I considered its mysterious landing an omen of its potential awesomeness – let alone the fact that it had two bucks worth of unused stamps on it – WooHoo!

So…Echodrone – think the washed out guitar of My Bloody Valentine, but with somewhat of an overall mellower, dreamier vibe, the kind of female vocals that make your brain feel all squishy, and the explosive bouts of energy that come around towards the end of some huge Sigur Ros tunes. In other words, it’s ethereal power rock at its finest. Now these guys are in no way trying to write a hit or anything resembling something that any normal radio station would ever go near – rather they’re making massive movements of atmospheric growth. This is the kind of shit that would go over great late night at a music festival when you and your friends are just settling into the tail end of your mushroom trip and smoking the largest joint of all time. They like to label themselves as dream pop, but they definitely fall heavier on the dream than the pop.

If this was 1999, you and all your best friends would already be knee-deep into this record. But this is the future, and a time when it’s increasingly hard to find outlets for people to explore your music with no pre-referential cues. Especially when the band has a name that could potentially be the title of some horrid dub-step DJ – I was actually quite weary before I first gave it a spin. But here’s your chance to be cool  for once, and be the one who introduces the hip new druggy, dreamy band to all your friends who love druggy and dreamy shit. You can stream and buy the whole record HERE, as well as check out their new album of covers which includes a surprisingly killer take on Christopher Cross’ “Sailing.”