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BandCom PT: LOVE ECHO – ENTREVISTA

Love Echo é uma fusão entre as programações de Victor Miranda e a voz de Vicki Glass radicada no Luxemburgo mas que se estreia em Portugal no FUSING Culture Experience. Com um disco bem convidativo intitulado “I Promise You Always The Sky”, Victor Miranda presta-se a desvendar connosco um pouco do que está por detrás de uma sonoridade musculada, matematicamente electrónica mas aconchegante o suficiente para não sufocar os ares tão pop e tão luxuosos que Sun Glitters (que também subirá ao mesmo palco na mesma noite) imaginaria para si.




BandCom (BC): É difícil definir o vosso estilo de música assim como a localidade onde residem. Uma coisa tem a ver com a outra ou nem por isso ?

Love Echo (LE): Não nos definimos ou gostamos de estar num só local. Fazemos a música como a sentimos e queremos ir aonde o vento nos levar.

BC: Ao contrário de muitos músicos do mundo da electrónica, optaram por ter convosco uma voz feminina. O que é que isso acrescenta? Que força acham que isso voz traz a mais durante os lives ?

LE: Sentimos que a nossa música necessita da sensualidade feminina. É deslumbrante, afectuosa, misteriosa…como uma mulher. Pura e simplesmente, traz-nos uma sensação de paz.

BC: Qual foi o feedback que têm recebido depois da edição do vosso “I Promise You Always The Sky”?

LE: O feedback acerca da música foi surpreendente. Não estávamos à espera que tivesse a atenção ou os elogios que teve…embora no próximo disco possamos usar um melhor designergráfico, na verdade.

BC: Chill, silêncio, descontração, sonho, anti-stress…  são coisas que vocês querem transmitir através da vossa música. Esta mensagem vai de encontro ao sinal dos tempos? Poderá soar isto a algo utópico/naïf?

LE: Na verdade é uma revolta contra o sinal dos tempos. Sentimos que há cada vez mais poluição sonora a rebentar com a pulsação, com os níveis de stress e tensão arterial das pessoas. A música perdeu a sua beleza e o seu poder de influenciar positivamente as pessoas. Queríamos fazer algo que relaxasse que fizesse as pessoas largar o que as faz ter tanta pressa de fazer ou de ouvir. Mais silêncio do que barulho: a beleza está no silêncio.

BC: É compatível este tipo de música com espaços mais festivaleiros ?

LE: Veremos. Esperamos fazer deste festival uma grande celebração do amor.

BC: Os próximos lançamentos serão mais negros ou tão luminosos como o nome “Love Echo” sugere?

LE: O nosso nome sugere 70s disco night, portanto é nesta direcção que iremos prosseguir.

BC: Quais são as vossas referências a nível de música portuguesa? Com quem gostariam de atuar?

LE: Qualquer artista de fado.

BC: Fazer parte do cartaz do FUSING Culture Experience significa para vós…

LE: Uma oportunidade de ouvir música fantástica.

BC: Como surgiu a oportunidade de integrarem este cartaz? O Victor Ferreira (Sun Glitters) deu-vos algum empurrão?

LE: Na verdade, o João dos Un:Think, um dos organizadores do festival, encontrou-nos no Soundcloud e remisturou uma faixa nossa, a “Daybreak”. Foi a partir daí que ficámos ligados a este festival.

BC: Para o resto do ano, o que podemos esperar dos Love Echo a nível de lançamentos e concertos?

LE: Isso depende apenas da direcção em que o vento sopre.

Mickaël C. de Oliveira

– BandCom PT

Posted in Interview

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

Posted in Interview

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

Posted in Interview

DUMMYMAG :: PREMIERE: LOVE ECHO – HUSH

Premiere: Love Echo – Hush

Listen exclusively to the eerie pop sheen of a track off this dreamy duo’s debut, and read our Q&A with them.

On their Soundcloud, Love Echo – comprising producer Vic Miranda and vocalist Vicki Glass – list some rather humorously knowing genre names: things like “post-chillwave, post-post-twee, post-traumatic stress disorder”. While these are playful, they do hint at a desire to avoid overt classification. Perhaps due to their globe-trotting connections (they met in Paris, Vic is from Luxembourg and Vicki is based in Tokyo), while their debut reaches for a clear pop sensibility, it doesn’t bother itself in reaching towards some hastily coined new scene or online sound.

Rather, their aesthetic is one that confidently burns off any excess to leave the pure chemistry between the pair – built on hypnotic keyboards that continuously encircle Vicki’s murmuring, evaporating vocals. Hush, lifted from the ‘I Promise You Always The Sky’ album, displays their triumphant simplicity – whipping up swirling atmospherics that seem to keep expanding out into an icy void. Stream the track below, and scroll down to read our chat with Vic and Vicki.

Hi Love Echo, what have you been up to recently?

Hello! Lately we’ve been searching for inspiration for a follow-up release by curling up in bed with hypnotic psychedelia and exotic dreamscapes – some good friends of ours.

You’ve said you hope people will find the “debut so chill they’ll get goosebumps”,and restraint feels like a key to its success– how easy was it to capture this in the production?

It was very natural for us. We appreciate the beauty of silence and solitude and somehow wanted to incorporate that in the sound. We wanted people to feel the silence in a sense, and put them in a space where they have no choice but to listen carefully, which requires that they take a break from it all and chill.

Hush certainly carries an air of restraint – but there’s also an eerie atmosphere running under its dreamy warmth. Was this something you were consciously trying to evoke?

Most definitely. Hush was the first track we did together, keeping this sense of the beauty of silence in mind. Hence the name Hush. We had the image of a warm breeze providing a lulling background hum to the silence. When we are making music together we often feel that we are in the middle of a daydream, and when we snap out of it we’re often quite surprised by the result. We work so naturally together, and Hush was one of the many tracks that flowed out ethereally and rather instantaneously in this way.

Are there any new artists coming out of Luxembourg, or things going on in the city right now that you’d like to flag up for the Dummy readers?

We actually spend most of our time away from Luxembourg. At the moment it’s fair to say that we are everywhere. The only artist from Luxembourg that we really know and highly respect is Sun Glitters. And we don’t say that just because he is a good friend, but because he is a talented and inspirational
artist. And we highly recommend anyone who comes to Luxembourg city to go to the Chocolate House across from the Grand Ducal Palace, for obvious reasons.

Lebenstrasse Records will release the ‘I Promise You Always The Sky’ LP on 28th January

– DUMMYMAG

Posted in Interview

The GROUND Magazine :: Interview with Love Echo

With only two tracks released under their name, Love Echo is a new project with producer, Vic Miranda and singer, Vicki Glass. For the most part they’ve been pretty mysterious about what they’re doing, but when they released their cover of “Lovecats”, a song by The Cure, many people took notice. Corresponding with The GROUND Magazine, Love Echo talks about their project, inspiration behind their name, and what they see for their future.

How did the two of you decide to get together to start this project?

Vicki: 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. From there we thought we’d do an EP, and when we did “The Lovecats” track, we put it out there as a teaser for it. We had no idea that people would like it as much as we do, and are awestruck and extremely humbled by the attention it’s getting.

Why did you name this project Love Echo?

Vicki: We came up with the name pretty much the same time that we were talking about how music has lost its beauty. We wanted a name that would describe what we are trying to do with this project. We sort of wished we could just call the project “love”, but obviously that sounded a bit too much like a title for a compilation album of greatest love songs of the ‘70s. So we added “echo” to give the project a sort of gentle, breathy, feminine image of spreading love. And now it probably sounds more like a title for a compilation album of greatest love songs of the ‘80s.

So you’re currently working on your debut album, how is that going? What should people expect to hear?

Vic: The album is currently being pressed. We’re hoping people will find it so chill they’ll get goosebumps.

Who and what were your influences for this project?

Vicki: Midnight, sunflowers, lucid dreaming and kittens. And an occasional pint of vanilla ice cream.

What are you currently listening to now?

Vicki: Porcelain Raft and Franz Schubert’s Sonata for Piano in A major, D. 959
Vic: Various golden era hip-hop and Stephan Bodzin.

You released a wonderful teaser into your music, a cover of The Love Cats by The Cure, how did you decide to pick that song?

Vicki: 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.

What do you love the most about music?

Vicki: Its passion, its ability to move people in incredible ways.

What are your plans for the future for Love Echo?

Vicki: We’re really just taking this project day by day. We’ll probably be touring in the immediate future, and we’re still making tracks, eating loads of ice cream and cuddling kitties. Maybe there’s a second album in there somewhere, but we’re not thinking too far ahead and are just hoping that at least a track or two on our debut release will touch a few people.

By 

 

– The GROUND Magazine

Posted in Interview