Repeat Button :: Love Echo – Daybreak

love echo

First there was post-rock. Then came post-dubstep. Shit just aint cool unless it’s post its origins yeah? So welcome to the world of Love Echo. They are pretty much post-everything. Which basically means if you’re into post-relaxing in a hammock so deep you may never surface again, you’re going to dig Love Echo.

A duo from Luxemburg, they first made an appearance last year with their single, Love Cats, and they’ve wasted no time in getting an album together. I Promise You Always The Sky, came out yesterday on LebenStrasse Records and as the title suggests it will get you high. Download it from their bandcamp for a measly $10. Stuttering beats drowning in reverb, silky vocals caressing niggling woes away, this album will make you forget you have a job to go to in the morning. Pure bliss.

– Repeat Button

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Drowned In Sound :: Love Echo – I Promise You Always The Sky

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Haim may be the official sound of 2013 but there are plenty of other acts who can match their ability to replicate Eighties electronic pop: Vic Miranda and Vicki Glass are one, and have been doing their thing as Love Echo in Paris for a year, creating luscious, innovative digital treats that don’t quite deserve the Cantona poetry title they’ve been given here. I Promise You Always The Sky is a tight collection of futuristic but intimate tracks; a kick up the arse for vocal electronica albums, and one whose lyrics don’t make you want to drop a piano on the DJ.

Those who already know Love Echo will surely know them for their cover of The Cure’s ‘Love Cats’, which replaces the jangly miaowing of the original with stalking electronics, a piano melody, finger clicks and shimmering pads. It sets the tone for I Promise’s interpretation of pop, which Vicki Glass gives a very human face to with her breathy, pour-your-heart-out lyrics (“I need you/I need your star to find me again/I need your lips to define me again,” she sings on ‘Departure’, smoothing out the fuzzy synths). Other tracks portray her as a dance floor ice queen: ‘Daybreak’ layers ominous strings over a crunchy beat, while ‘Control’ takes an operatic house tune and slows it down so that the keyboards, piano and click track pass you by like a procession.

Most of the time I Promise remembers it’s a pop album, puffing out its hybrid sound rather than letting it mooch in the background. Sometimes it doesn’t: ‘We’ is glittery minimal techno that toys with angry bass music, not exactly eloquent with its single lyric but flexing the muscles of Vic Miranda’s digital production. ‘Eligy’ is another fence-sitter, letting Glass sigh over chords from Imogen Heap’s synthesizer. But the album gets its legs back when it rolls out ‘Hush’, four minutes of smooth neon breaks where end of a relationship blues are played out over exhausted beats. It somehow achieves chirpiness, paving the way for the more upbeat ‘Light’, which combines keyboards, staggered bass drums and lyrics like slogans from a biker bar (”Can’t get to heaven without going through hell”).

Despite a scattering of cheap couplets, I Promise You Always The Sky is a strong set of songs from Love Echo, essential for fans of woozy, bass-heavy electronica with vocals that don’t assume they’ve been lobotomised. Vic Miranda’s atmospheric pop is ideal for Glass’s voice, which compensates with mischief whenever it gets stuck in a groove – ninth track ‘One’ repeats a single piano loop, while tenth track ‘Eleven’ (the track listing is anarchy) layers fidgety percussion over nonsense words and keyboards. Like Crystal Castles sent to bed with a glass of warm milk, Love Echo’s album is a consistent enough set of subversive, coy digital pop songs, worth sticking around for after ‘Lovecats’ fades out.

– Drowned In Sound

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MTV Iggy :: Love Echo is a New Group…But They Promise the Sky

Love Echo is a New Group…But They Promise the Sky

Ah, to be laid back and totally #winning. World, meet Love Echo, MTV Iggy’s Artist of the Week and the first Luxembourg (via Portugal via the US via Tokyo) artist to make its way on our digital shores. They just released their relaaaaxing debut album I Promise You Always the Sky, which is full of laid back reverb and stuttery beats, and it’s perfect for the days you feel like sinking into some furniture and never getting up.

We spoke to the winners Vic Miranda (producer) and Vicki Glass (singer) about their sudden splash, their multi-culti backgrounds, and the deal with Luxembourg.

Congrats on the win! How does it feel?

Thank you so much! It feels like when your dad offers you your first alcoholic beverage when you’re a teen, and you want it, even though you know you’re too green and clumsy to have it.

Great timing with your album release. Do you finally feel in some sense
that you can relax a bit?

We were actually thinking that maybe we’ve been a little too relaxed, as this whole project began on a whim anyway. Now with an album release we need to get more serious.

Can you clarify where you guys are from and based? Lots of different
versions of that. Vicki, how did you wind up in Tokyo?

Vic is Portuguese and is based in Luxembourg, and I’m an American based in Tokyo. I’ve always been fascinated with Asian culture—Chinese and Japanese in particular—and when I discovered Tokyo I just couldn’t leave. There is always something wildly off the hook happening there, but at the same time it retains an underlying sense of calm.

Who are some of your heroes, musically and otherwise?

Vic: I’ve always admired these four artists for their musical creativity: J. Dilla, Pete Rock, Stephan Bodzin and Robert Babicz. I really don’t have any heroes outside of the music world.

Vicki: I have so many heroes inside and outside the music world that it’s hard to narrow them down. I’d have to say love most 80s artists (The Cure, without a doubt) and more recently, bands like Aereogramme and Los Campesinos! In the otherwise category, my big heroes (from the distant past) are poet/writer Rainier Maria Rilke and painter Casper David Friedrich.

We search all day for good global music, but we’ve written so little
about Luxembourg. Is that because we’re bad at our jobs, or is there little
international attention on the music scene there? Or, is there not much to
report on?

Maybe it’s because it’s so tiny, it’s easy to miss. Luxembourg is so small that it takes about an hour to drive through it. We’ve met so many people that haven’t even heard of it. But there’s a burgeoning indie scene that is poised to explode. Stay tuned!

It’s such a beautiful country. Does your city inspire you musically?

It really is. We’re inspired most by feelings, words and sounds, but the city offers great support for the kind of music we do as it’s a wonderfully peaceful, secret hiding place.

I Promise You Always The Sky sounds like a love ode — what does it mean?

It sounds like a love ode but it’s actually more philosophical. In life we can’t promise anything really, because all is impermanent and fleeting, including love. We can’t even promise that everyone will like the album! But the one real and concrete promise we can make is the sky: it will always be there.

You are given the opportunity to be the soundtrack for any scene in any
movie, real or no. What is that scene?

Definitely we’d be the soundtrack to all the restrained, unrequited love scenes between Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins in Remains of the Day.

What’s next for you guys?

We’d love to tour, and in the meantime we’re working on more tracks. We’re still just stunned and very grateful and just taking it all in!

Check out their new single “Daybreak.”

– MTV Iggy

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Love Echo – “Lovecats” / “Daybreak” – Listen

Love Echo

Mesmerizing dream pop from Love Echo.

Tokyo/Luxembourg-based duo Love Echo will release their debut album I Promise You Always the Sky tomorrow (January 28, 2013). Made up of members producer Vic Miranda and vocalist Vicki Glass, the duo first caught attention with a cover of The Cure‘s “Lovecats”, which garnered 40 000 listens via their Soundcloud page alone. Listen to their cover of the song and check out another single, “Daybreak”.

“Lovecats”

Vicki Glass on “Lovecats”:

“I have always really loved that song and wanted to do a slower, more sensual version of it. I pitched the idea of covering it to Vic, but he thought this project should have a ‘no covers’ policy and had never heard the song. I sent him my vocal track anyway, and the fact that he didn’t know the song turned out to be a great blessing, because he was able to create a completely original and wildly beautiful piano-laden track for it.”

“Daybreak”

I Promise You Always the Sky
LebensStrasse Records
January 28, 2013

Track List:
1. Departure
2. We
3. Lovecats
4. Eligy
5. Daybreak
6. Hush
7. Light
8. Control
9. One
10. Eleven

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MTV Iggy :: Artist of the Week: Luxembourg’s Love Echo

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Artist of the Week was fierce this week. The bling was off, the claws were out, and the fan voting was violent. But now, it’s time to relax and sink into the sllloowww rellaxxxinnggg reverrrberratting album from our winners from Luxembourg, Love Echo. 

Their win is super timely; the duo’s liquidy debut album I Promise You Always The Sky was released just last week, and after listening to it on full blast, I’m finding it truly tragic that our office came with a spa. We stick by our previous comparisons: you’re in for the dream electro-pop of Grimes, experimental beats of Daedelus, and the trip hop sink-into-the-couch vibe of Morcheeba. In short, irresistible. In short, find the nearest sauna and climb into it.

Stay tuned for a tell-all with the band, but in the meantime, enjoy their single “Hush.”

By Halley Bondy

– MTV Iggy

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The 405 :: Plastic Platform C32: Love Echo

Plastic Platform C32: Love Echo

We continue the Plastic Platform love in (following last week’s mix by Lovelier Other) with Love Echo, a duo consisting of producer Vic Miranda and vocalist Vicki Glass created in a dreamsphere in Luxembourg.

Check out their cover of The Cure’s ‘Lovecats‘ for a bespoke ambient-pop take on the classic track; debut album I Promise You Always the Sky is out January 28th via Portuguese label LebensStrasse Recordswhere you can – and probably should – pre-order it.

See below for an intro by Love Echo to the mix, and check the tracklisting for thoughts on each individual track.

“The first half of our mix has Vicki’s picks. The tracks have the kind of psychedelia, textured dreamscapes and hypnotic, pillowy ambience that inspire her most. The last half of the mix include Vic’s picks and are well-produced, chill tracks with beautiful melodies and some vintage synth lines that make him pay attention. All the track picks make us feel extremely humbled and lucky to have the chance to put our own stuff out there.”

    • Vicki’s tracklisting
    • 1. Markarians – Alligators
    • “Love his folk sensibilities and sleepy vocals.”

 

    • 2. Gypsy & The Cat – Bloom
    • “No one does Cure/Echo and the Bunnymen 80s-ness better than these guys.”

 

    • 3. Francis Neve – Calls

“The track reeled me in with its oh-ohs and ai-ais. Stellar vocals.”

 

    • 4. Tame Impala – Feels Like We Only Go Backwards
    • “My most-very-favorite psychedelic band. Very John Lennon.

 

    • 5. Blackbird Blackbird – Pure
    • “Can’t get enough of the beautifully textured dreamscapes in this track.”

 

    • 6. Honeyslide – Black Dolphin
    • “Honeyslide oozes unadulterated, honest shoegaze. I love the truly hypnotic, pillowy ambience of this track.”

 

    • 7. Gold Panda- Casio Daisy
    • “Sunshiney, blooming daisy bliss. Squeaky, bird-chirpy beats. Love it.”
    • Vic’s tracklisting
    • 8. Pavel Petrov (Pi3) – Show Me Love
    • “Chill, lovely melody. Well produced.”

 

    • 9. Blackbird Blackbird – Keep it up (Sun Glitters Remix)
    • “We both wanted to include my mate Sun Glitters on the mix. We love the way he made this tense tune sound chill.”

 

    • 10. αtμ – What you like
    • “Soulful and full of heart.”

 

    • 11. Lykke Li – I Follow Rivers (Love Echo Rework)
    • “We wanted to calm this track down.”

 

    • 12. Flying Lotus – Sultan’s Request
    • “One of the best productions I’ve ever heard. Respect.”

 

    • 13. Clams Casino – Leaf [A$AP Rocky ft. Main Attrakionz]
    • “This track is just chill.”

 

    • 14. Sun Glitters – Love Me
    • “My favourite Sun Glitters track. Reminds me of good times on the road with him.”

 

    • 15. Clams Casino – I’m God [Lil B]
    • “He’s a god and this track touches me deeply.”

 

    • 16. Miles Bonny – As You Sleep On My Lap [Beat by Ta-Ku]
    • “Love the fat, warm sound of this track.”

 

    • 17. House Shoes – Empire Reprise feat. Sam Beaubien of Will Sessions (Instrumental)
    • “Great track for lounging around the house.”

 

    • 18. Essáy – Old Times
    • “My favorite track from Essay. Love the vintage synth sample.”

 

    • 19. Clams Casino – Swervin (Instrumental)
    • “Always Clams Casino.”

 

  • 20. Brian Eno – An Ending
  • “Simply a great ending for the mix.”

– The 405

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Pigeonnote :: Love Echo – I Promise You Always The Sky

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There seems to be a plethora of synth-pop duos out there at the moment and Tokyo/Luxembourg based Love Echo also attempt to make their mark on the genre with their upcoming debut album I Promise You Always the Sky out January 28th onLebensStrasse Records.

Love Echo came about when Vic Miranda (producer) and Vicki Glass (Vocals) felt music had lost its beauty and decided to make something that they love and hope will give people goosebumps.

Unlike some synth-pop duos they’ve shunned the moody approach and Glass’ vocals are as sickly sweet as pop princess Kylie Minogue’s. Yet in a dream-pop manner they are sensual, take openerDeparture, Glass almost seduces the listener as she declares ‘I need you’. With this alluring charm the duo recorded and released their own take on The Cure’s The Love Cats (track 3 on the album), which caught the attention of the world’s ears with over 40,000 listens on their soundcloud page alone. The Cure‘s famous lyrics, now in the hands of Glass, slide over resonate piano.

Whilst none of the tracks build into dance anthems, there is underlying dance vibe to I Promise You Always The Sky. The synths are thick in parts and the melodies sometimes urgent. There are moments when you think a track might just explode into an uptempo scurry. However, like in the latter half of Daybreak, the synths always bow to the soothing qualities of Glass’ vocals.

Falling into into a sleepy haze whilst listening to this album is easy, fourth track Eligyfloats on with only the flickers of a drum machine to keep you conscious, as Glass whispers, ‘it’s all a lucid dream’.

Love Echo have to contend in a highly saturated genre but there are some beautiful tracks on I Promise You Always The SkyThe Love Cats cover is just mesmerising and the poppy/dance feel to the album will play to Love Echo’s advantage in terms of commercial success.

– Pigeon Note

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The Girls Are :: READ ALL ABOUT IT | LOVE ECHO

Love Echo

New LebensStrasse Records signings Love Echo have announced release details for their debut LP.

The dream-pop duo, comprised of producer Vic Miranda and vocalist Vicki Glass, first drew tastemakers’ attention with their radical, ethereal reworking of The Cure‘s ‘Lovecats’.

Aiming to make good on that initial introduction, the pair’s album I Promise You Always The Skyis also chock-full of sensuous sounds that, originally, were made on a whim, as Glass reveals.

She says: “We were talking about how music has seemed to have lost its beauty, and decided to try to make something that we loved. Vic first came up with a charmingly seductive track full of synth lines, and I added some words and vocals to it.

“It all came together rather quickly. We did it just for our own amusement at first, but we liked what we heard and decided to do more tracks, which also came together almost immediately.”

And we’re rather glad they did. See if you agree by wrapping your ears around album track ‘Daybreak’ below:

I Promise You Always The Sky is out through LebensStrasse Records on January 28.

Amy Bell

– The Girls Are

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