Echo Lake chose their name well because they sound almost exactly as you'd expect: expansive, wild, ethereal, with endless depths of shimmering reverb. As is often the case, I first heard about them over at the eternally excellent No Pain In Pop. The London-based five-piece: Thom, Linda, Steve, Kier and Pete ñ finished this lushly monolithic new track mere moments ago, and you can hear it here for the first time. I had a chat with them about weird coincidences and goaded them into tattooing their girlfriends.
Download: Echo Lake, "Young Silence"
Have any of you been to Echo Lake? It looks cool.
No, we haven't. Weirdly enough the other day Thom's girlfriend's dad found this painting. It's a painting of Echo Lake by an artist called Thomas Hill, which is Thom's name. That was pretty weird but we can honestly say we had thought of the name before we saw that painting. The painting is like 100 or so years old. It's a sign. We should move there to write an album one day. We'd also love to play there, in the middle of the lake.
More than most bands your name is a pretty accurate description of your sound.
The songs have been recorded by Thom at home and the sound is just the result of trying different approaches. Sometimes a song would be done in a day, others have taken months. It just depends, they happen as they come.
There is another Echo Lake from Kansas. They list their influences as Milli Vanilli and Rammstein. That makes them sound a lot better than they actually are. You are much better, but will you ever be this committed?
Thom's girlfriend gave herself the same tattoo [see above], but with blue sharpie so it was nowhere near as committed. Rammstein do the best videos ever but Milli Vanilli are just idiots. We had a listen to the other Echo Lake, we just hope people won't get us confused. Linda is seriously considering rivaling their commitment by getting "Everything is Real" tattooed on her forehead and braiding her hair just like Milli Vanilli.
I don't know very much about you guys. How did you come to be making such awesome music together?
We met last year at university. Thom was doing Echo Lake on his own as a bedroom project and asked Linda to join. After working on the songs for a while we decided we wanted to turn it into something that could translate into a live show, which is when Steve, Kier and Pete came on board. Thom had played in a band with all three of them before so there is already a good understanding and foundation to take it forward.
You have a song called "In Dreams." What do you think of the term dream-pop? You sound a pretty dreamy bunch.
If people describe our music as dream-pop then that's cool. We like to think we are just making our own kind of pop music, but the best pop music is dreamy anyway because it can take you somewhere else. We are a pretty dreamy bunch though, thanks.
Your MySpace URL is echolakeandthestrangeera. What is The Strange Era?
This.