By: Daniela Patrizi
Echoes and Signals | website | facebook | twitter |
Released on November 27, 2014 via Bandcamp
Less than one year after the release of Ouroboros (you can read the review here), Russian instrumental post rock outfit Echoes and Signals is back with its third album, V. Hailing from Tula, the band made up of Fedor Kivokurtsev (guitar), Alexey Zaytsev (bass) and Yaroslav Egorov (drums) can be considered another solid post-rock/progressive rock/ “post everything” (as they define their music style) band that comes from Russia, a country that has been producing a handful of extremely talented and promising bands.
As it’s written on the bandcamp page of the band, V, the new album, ‘is dedicated to the five stages of acceptance: denial, anger, guilt, depression and realisation’. It sounds like a journey aimed to work as a kind of therapy through the darkest moments of the listener.
At the first listen of V you can notice that, compared to the previous Ouroboros, the band has incorporated more progressive rock elements into their post rock texture through the use of catchy guitars and atmospheric build-up.
The 50-minute albums is composed by 11 tracks and 5 out of them are less than 2 minutes’ length and work as intro to the longer songs. The structure of the album gives the whole composition a nice dynamism. The overall sound appears like the overlapping of several different tones and elements creating a compounded quantity of detail and decay. Also the atmosphere respects the album dynamics and it’s sometimes inspiring while other times is murky but always vibrant.
I’ve been listening to V again and again in the last days and it’s clear that the band has refined their sound and have a well defined style.
V kicks off with the first intro titled I – the five intros are called ‘I’, ‘II’, ‘III’, ‘IV’ and ‘V’ – and it’s a nice way to start the journey through the album movements. I enjoyed the dense and vibrant mood of ‘Over The Lethe’, the first long track whose first half reminds me of a sound I know but I’m not able to recognise. The song is a kind of ride across the waves of experimental and space rock till dissolving in the second intro.
‘Caught By The Water (feat. Adaen)’ is the only track on the album to feature vocals and marks something new in the band’s musical style. The interplay between the music and the vocals is notable especially because they seem to follow two different rhythms, giving a unique vitality to the song.
I have to admit that the first half of the album didn’t conquer me: it’s enjoyable but it didn’t leave a particular mark on me. It’s in the second half of the album that the trio shows excellent musicianship and they give the impression that there’s a very good chemistry among them and they are very responsive to each other’s sounds.
I particularly like the intro ‘IV’ and the following ‘Hadal Pelagic’ for its vertigo of sound that entraps you from the very beginning. Its darker dimension and the dense riffing with thumping bass evoke the feeling of desperation and helplessness. It’s really a good track.
The intro number ‘V’ is a wonderful and restoring piano piece that leads the listeners to the last two tracks where elements of post rock, post metal and doom are perfectly balanced in a vibrating atmosphere.
The last part of the album is the proof of the band’s movement forward and shows the more mature face of their sound. There’s no doubt that the third record from Echoes and Signals is a compelling listen and an enjoyable journey with moments of pure beauty.
