"I want it to be pop music, but with a difference." -- Richard Warren, Echoboy
The difference is clear: one man, myriad ideas, a sparking new pop vision for a new era. Richard Warren is at the controls of Echoboy's sonic groove factory, and Volume 1 is your introduction to his shop floor of sound.
The theory is simple: "You listen to a Bob Dylan record, listen to a Television record, listen to a Kraftwerk record, listen to a Chemical Brothers record and then put it all together. All these are the best people of their day, so if you put it together then you should have the perfect hybrid," says Richard. Perfect pop music both captures the moment and transcends the era. Love pop music and you'll love Echoboy.
Volume 1 moves through a slipstream of atmospherics, grooves, and warps. "Model 352" mimics a production line: hissing pistons, infectious rhythms that begin at once to invade and disorient the mind and make the body move. The inspirations: Kraftwerk and Iggy Pop. "Iggy's first records were directly influenced by his surroundings in Detroit. He would hear the factory hammers beating at the Ford Motors plant and he wanted the Stooges to sound like the production line."
Further along the voyage, "Broken Hearts" belies its ethereal electronic wash with darker, malevolent beats. "I like beautiful music," Richard says, "but I also like that dark side. That song could be looked at from either side. It's like Steve Reich meets he Stone Roses' 'I Wanna Be Adored.ΓÇÖ"
Things get still more intense as the atmospheric "Constantinople" slides into the ominous guitar-bow riffery on "Crocodile Milk." Then, the tension is broken by the sublime "Walking," a sparkling homage to breathy French 1960s pop.
The richness of Echoboy's vision is Warren's lifetime immersion in sound. As a teenager, he learned heady guitar licks from Hendrix, went on to front the power trio the Hybirds, and was recently courted by the suddenly guitar-less Oasis. When they found out that he hadn't joined, The Sun awarded Richard the immortal accolade: "He's not mad for it--he's just mad!"
Instead, Richard left the conventional music biz route, holed up with an eight-track and a Casio, and set about creating new worlds from above his mum's hair salon in Nottingham. Putting out his debut "Flashlegs" single on Pointblank records in July 1998, shortly followed by the Echoboy album, he set tongues wagging throughout the press. "Bruce Springsteen meets Kraftwerk," reckoned the New Musical Express. "Faust via Stereolab," added Time Out London. More singles followed: "Scene 30" on Earworm, an unprecedented double 7-inch "Pure New Woo"' for the Rough Trade Singles Club.
While the press argued the toss between Krautrock and Primal Scream, Mute's Daniel Miller traveled to Nottingham to hear an entire album's worth of newly recorded material. Echoboy signed to Mute in March 1999, beginning the liaison with the stunning, backwards-masked, Bobbie Gentry-sampling "Canada" from the Frances Says The Knife Is Alive EP.
"It's not been like, ΓÇÿThe pop thing's finished, I'm going experimental now,ΓÇÖ" Richard declares. "It's just that I'm signed to a label now that allows me to do experimental music. I don't want to get caught up in some little bedroom scene; I want to sell records. I try to be really honest with my music, and if there's a surprise element to the album, where people don't know where it's going next, then that's good.
"I want people who like Echoboy to be curious," he concludes, "and discerning, too. They don't have to like everything, 'cause then you don't have to work to a blueprint or define your style. I want to leave the doors open, so I can go in any direction."
