Don’ you think it’s lovely to have waking dreams whilst listening to music that inspires colours and shapes? If your answer to this question is ‘yes’ then perhaps you will find some space in your imagination for All India Radio’ ‘Echo Other’.
The cover (designed by the band’ founding member Martin Kennedy) depicts control towers free floating through vector art interpretations of a warm, outer-space landscape. The music reflects this theme of interplanetary communication with a call-and-response effect of frequency tones travelling the static airwaves, where voices and instruments are encoded and decoded periodically. With production handed over to the capable hands of Bryon Scullin (Biftek, David Bridie, Wolf Creek soundtrack) each track is seamlessly stitched to form an expanding sense of other-world-ness that remains consistent throughout.
‘Mexicola’ is one of my favourite tracks with its subtle traces of the cowboy epic (stemming from the lazy rhythmic pace of the piece and the resounding Ennio Morricone-like bass notes). ‘The Quiet Ambient’s provides a gentle kick with live drums underscoring the ambience and guitars, building with a cameo of strings before drifting into ‘Song C’, one of the bigger sounding tracks on this album with many layers of instrumentation taking place. My only disappointment comes at the very beginning of the album with track ‘Four Three’. Here an ethereal voice sings, “Welcome, to my world…stay, you are not alone”, encapsulating a chill-out genre cliché that the album could easily do without. The subtle poetics of the music itself are enough to tell that story. With its surrounding embrace you just know that you have entered their world and yes, it’s an entrancing place.
Renae Mason.
