It’s been quite a while since my last post and I do apologize – lots of life stuff going on but I’m back with my review of the latest singles released by the band and I must say – they are FANTASTIC!

echolyn – Another Stone (Single released May 27th, 2013)

I have to be careful when reviewing any new echolyn because I have a tendency to jump to the conclusion that THIS is the best thing they’ve done yet!

Some of that enthusiasm comes from the fact that echolyn has been getting BETTER as time goes on and “Another Stone” (IMO) is perhaps the pinnacle of their creativity so far.

Each member puts forth a stellar performance in this track: emotion, power, technical prowess that all come together in a beautiful, tight package.

Chris Buzby’s keys are just sublime – mixing Piano, Hammond organ, wurly, and synth to weave a beautiful musical landscape for which the other members to play on. This is the best I’ve heard him play so far.

I can’t say it enough – Tom Hyatt’s return to lead bass has also brought back the echolyn sound I fell in love with – providing the punch and energy that he and Paul Ramsey are so adept at.

Paul Ramsey is my all-time favorite drummer who knows how to play brilliantly without being flashy or overbearing. His drumming provides so much flavor to echolyn’s music and with Tom at his side – is the energy that drives the band. Tom – you ROCK man!

Brett Kull has always wowed me with his playing but the guitar work on this track is just stunning. As with the rest of the band he has risen above everything he’s done before – not flashy…just so damned good.

Ray Weston’s vocals have actually improved over the years…which doesn’t happen with most vocalists and this track is also his best so far. The fact that he wrote this song about his mother who passed away recently so soon after his father explains the strong emotional delivery.

Ray’s writing has also really blossomed with age – penning some of the best tunes for echolyn thus far.

THIS is how I like my echolyn – I love this period of their playing and I so look forward to more!

echolyn – Crows Fly By (Single released May 27th, 2013)

This track reminds me very much of “And Every Blossom” and has a nice jazzy feel to it and flows in a different direction than the norm for them – ending with a tasty, spacey mix which I found very refreshing. echolyn should explore this side of themselves in the future.

echolyn – Moments With No Sound (Single released Dec 10th, 2012)

Great, solid echolyn tune filled with everything you love about echolyn: catchy hooks/harmonies, outstanding musicanship, emotion – just excellent and upbeat!

echolyn – This Is How We Left It (Single released Dec 10th, 2012)

Love the jazzy intro! “This Is How We Left It” fuses together sounds from Mei and The End Is Beautiful and blends in some excellent sax which reminds me of Bruce Spingsteen – just a great tune!

“Accumulated Blur was one of the first tracks we had written for the album. We started working on in back in April 2007 and have some cool footage from those sessions. The song has gone through many re-writes and re-recordings. It didn’t feel complete until we came up with the ending you commented on. We were working on the song at my home studio. Chris and I came came up with the end solo section on acoustic guitar and wurlitzer in my living room one night. We got Paul to play the ending and threw down the other instruments quickly on top of it. It finally felt right to us.

The song is a testament to a lot of hard work and I appreciate my fellow bands mate’s patience for letting me constantly tweak and rearrange this tune till it felt right. The last chord at the end (D Maj7) was supposed to go into another song i had written but we never saw it through. The fade-out of the mellotron flutes and sax are the ghost of that uncompleted song (that I’m actually working on in another project I’ve started with some Philadelphia song writers.)

The song is about a trip I made to Death Valley CA. I went there and fasted for 3 days and just hung out in the grand silence of the dessert. I left part of my past deep in the canyons and erosion washes. I’ve never stood in a place where there is absolutely no sound. Death Valley has that quality. The art work that accompanies the digital download was taken as the sun set on the third day of my fast (filtered through a celebratory bottle of wine). I love wine very much but it has never tasted as good as that moment. The first sip exploded in a buzz of flavors that had me high on in the invention of grape fermentation in the blink of an eye.”

All the best

b

It’s amazing that echolyn decided (of all days) to release 2 new tracks on my birthday: “Accumulated Blur ” (never before released) and a single release of 15 Days which was released as of a Katrina relief effort: After The Storm. Both are available now at echolyn.bandcamp.com:

All I can say is…wow! (thanks to fan Brett Landis for bringing this to my attention)

From echolyn.com:

*Two songs ~ one old and one new ~ on September 19, 2012*

“Accumulated Blur” – a song/diary written about a 3-day fast in Death Valley, CA.

“15 Days” – a 15-day lyrical tour-diary describing our tourbus fest on wheels, hurtling through Europe, from our 2005 tour. (This song was previously released to support the Hurricane Katrina CD release…but we’ve received the 7-year statute of limitation blessing from the Godfather of Prog, Chad Hutchinson, to re-release this song (and it will be both re-mixed and re-mastered).

Plans are to release both singles exclusively on echolyn’s bandcamp website as both CD quality (44.1kHz/16 bit) and FLAC/HI-RES (88.2kHz/24 bit) quality releases.

Three months from the release of echolyn (2012/The Windowpane album) we as a band are eager for what lies ahead. We hope you will all come along and continue to listen, and enjoy what comes after…

Please spread the word: there’s lots of room on this Island!

echolyn was featured in the July issue of Prog Magazine (now available in the U.S. this month at your local Barnes & Noble:

Nice interview with Brett Kull – you can also order it directly from the publisher in the U.K. - http://www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/music/prog-magazine-back-issues/prog-issue-28/

Brett Kull was asked about the recording process on the echolyn mailing list recently and here’s his response:

“Paul and i worked with Francis Dunnery for about 4 years solid. I think i was in the studio with him practically every week! Even when he was touring around Europe over those years I was mixing projects of his. He’s probably one of the best musicians I’ve ever played with. He’s a raw wire of creativity and taught me a lot about playing. One of the things he taught me was in regard to Drums. He worked with Robert Plant a few times and was able to become close friends. They’s talk about lots of things Zeppelin related, including John Bonham’s drums. Robert said everyone thinks Bonham beat the hell out of his kit… they are wrong in this assumption. Bonzo just knew how to hit them to make them sound like one unit and at the same time bring out the best tone in the drums.

There is a dynamic in all instruments (meaning how quiet and loud they can be) if I play a guitar or drum too quiet or loud it doesn’t sound “right.”You have to find the sweet area. Good Tone comes from knowing the dynamic range of what you are playing. Of course you can beat the hell out of an instrument for effect but only for a limited time before it just becomes annoying. John Bonham knew the dynamic range of the drum kit very well. He also knew how to tune it (and/or had someone that knew how to tune it for him). I had a chance to play with Robert and talk to him about this on a tour Paul and i did with Dunnery a couple years ago. He Confirmed what Francis told me, i.e., Bonham did not beat the hell out of his kit.

What I’m trying to say is that folks think heaviness comes from playing really hard. It does not. By playing hard on a kit or guitar you actually collapse the heads or strings and they loose that fullness of sound. The heaviness in Zeppelin comes from knowing dynamic range. In order for something to be loud you need to have quiet and vice-versa. if its loud all the time it’s just blah and one dimensional.

Compression and limiting these days (and over the past 10 + years) has been used to make things too loud in my opinion. This loudness comes from a “perceived” loudness, not an actual one. Going louder in regard to dB Full Scale (in the digital world) is a ceiling that has been intact since the inception of digital recording. Zero is and has been the loudest you can go in that domain. Even in the analog world there is a max before distortion occurs. Perceived loudness is attained by changing the dynamic range. As i said, instruments naturally have a dynamic range to them, by decreasing that range utilizing compressors and limiters you can give a sense of a perceived loudness. Unfortunately, as the dynamics of instruments and music is compressed more and more (to give this sense of loudness) the dynamic range is actually crushed to death.
Speaking of Death, Death Magnetic by Metallica is the famous example of going too far in this regard. You can hear clipping throughout the album and ear fatigue is prevalent because of the relentlessness of volume. When even the decay of instruments (the sound after they are played) is as loud as the “hit” you need to reevaluate what your doing in the context of recording, mixing and mastering.
Music is made by us, human beings. It needs to inhale as well as exhale. it needs to breathe. Some music these days, along with many clients of mine, want the masters to be so loud there is no exhale anymore. It feels like i just keep inhaling until I fall over and turn blue

Now, In regard to the drums on our new album, I actually used a little bit of compression on the snare (top mic) and overhead mics. I like the sound a good compressor can add to a kit. It helps keep things a little bit more immediate, but Paul played the kit to make it sound like a kit (thank you Francis and Robert). It sounds like one unit, not a bunch of pointy, bangy things. Because of Paul’s talent and willingness to learn, I got great tone from the whole kit working as one. What I mean by this is that when a drummer hits a snare the kit resonates all together. The toms resonate when they are not being played. The whole kit sort of rumbles along as an engine. Many engineers do this horrible thing called spot muting, where they mute parts of the kit when they are not being played. They do this out of inexperience and/or the kit is tuned improperly or the drummer is banging way too hard. I did NOT do this on this album. The kit is wide open with all mics firing all the time. This enables you to hear the insects within a kit (as Francis would say). You can hear the quiet stuff juxtaposed with the loud stuff because the drums are being “played on” not “banged on” by Paul. Kudos to Paul and Francis and the late John Bonham for showing me what the word “heavy” really means in recording drums. Listen to Paul playing on Dunnery’s album, There’s a Whole new World out There.

FYI: Paul used two kits on this album. A Pearl 5 piece and a Ludwig 5 piece (not played at the same time

I generally mic’ed them up and routed them as follows:

Bass drum 2 mics – SM7 or D112 and a home made sub mic Neotec series IIIc
Snare 2 mics – SM57 Top and KM 184 on the bottom Top-Neotec series IIIc – DBX 165 Comp, Bottom Neotec series IIIc
Hi Hat – KM 184 Neotec series IIIc
Tom 1 2 3 – Sennheiser 421s or AKG D3700 and D112 Neotec series IIIc
Overheads left and right – AKG C414 or Blue Bluebirds Neotec series IIIc – DBX 162 Comp
Room – sometimes in stereo or mono – Earthworks TC30K series 2x or Blue Woodpecker mono. Great River for stereo or Neotec series IIIc into DBX 160 Comp mono

Pretty simple. No bells and whistles. If you want to hear something cool listen to the drums at 4:38 to about 5:22 on When Sunday Spills. That’s just the mono room mic (Blue Woodpecker bi directional Ribbon mic) on the ludwig kit. Paul over-dubed a little splash cymbal on the right to give it some movement but the kit is one bi-directional mic. it sounds amazing. That’s what the kit sounded like when i stood in front of it!

Apologies for the long email. I’m a nerd and love talking shop with people. I’m still learning and certainly have a long way to go but i’m enjoying the ride and appreciate your comments about our music.”

cheers

b

Mike Reiss recently posted this excellent interview with echolyn – enjoy!

http://echolyninterview.blogspot.com/

I’m proud to announce that my review of echolyn’s new album has been published in the latest issue (July) of Rocktologist Magazine

Now available at Bandcamp for download in cd quality and 24 bit hi-res version:

http://echolyn.bandcamp.com/

Plus you get a free pdf download of the CD booklet.