ECHO US
Ethan Matthews, the creator of Echo Us, is from Portland, Oregon and Boston, Massachusetts. His style is ambient Celtic and traditional. In late 1996 Ethan recorded his first ever commercially available piece of music as a then 18 year-old guitarist working with electronics and ambient music. “Satre Dance” fell in right alongside all the new age and ambient music of the time. However Ethan’s mainstay in his early years, the progressive metal act Greyhaven is still known today as one of the pioneering, independent bands of the genre in the 1990s, having combined new age ambient music with progressive metal. Satre Dance represented a completely different area of expression projecting a more relaxing kind of creative muse that foreshadowed where his music would navigate to in later years with Echo Us. Satre Dance was originally released on an independent label compilation in the UK in October 1998.
He reprises it on the new Echo Us album, recorded on a hammered dulcimer as it was originally intended, and re-titled "Ariel". “Echo Us” literally means “to answer”, or “to connect”. After experiencing a series of consciousness-shifts, this would become a vehicle for Ethan’s forays into the world of metaphysics, as much as it was a continuation of his musical and creative world that had begun a decade earlier. His unique approach to composition “musical channeling” is often written in trance states with automatic writing as the primary technique for capturing the material. Echo Us music is both about pattern recognition and intuition featuring few stylistic boundaries.
“To Wake a Dream in Moving Water” is a comment on conception which was unintentional when the lyrics were written. Ethan surprised himself a few months after writing it, realizing that the song was actually about the nitty gritty, biological workings of what happens when a child is conceived. The folk song it derives from musically describes a courting ritual, one that even today we can all relate to in our own way. The rest of the music from “Wake a Dream in Moving Water” is all new, composed and recorded during the first few months of 2017. Although Celtic influenced and comprised of a number of re-workings of Irish folk tunes and Breton aires, the album is still in large part new and original Echo Us music that fits right in the bands ‘canon’. “Wake” is a natural progression from “A Priori Memoriae”, which was released to critical acclaim in Europe in 2014.
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A Waking Current - A gradual progression of sounds portraying what may be heard in a higher realm. Strength and a smooth jazz rock theme is added.
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Ariel (Satre Dance) - A beautiful dance as in a ballet envisioned from the play on piano keys. Swirling electronics and intricate additions add to its depth.
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Begin To Remember V2 - Piano and synth creating an ambiance of well being. A happy creation as in the beginning of remembering why we were put here on this earth in the first place and of the roles we are to carry out. 'I begin to remember. . . . .'
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Begin To Remember V1 - Guitar skipping running up and down the scales with a synth background. Emphasis is on the mission set out for seeking within yourself and the travels of your journey. 'As I began to remember, waves of winter. Swam to my eyes. I lost all I had. . . . .' The song continues into Celtic reveling.
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May Morning Dew - A sense of opening your eyes and noticing the morning dew hanging onto each leaf after a cool evening. What do you see reflected from the droplets? Do you reach down and touch the reflections? What memories do they bring and what lies ahead?
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From The Highlands - The music draws you into a scenery of vast green rolling hills and cloudy mountains with the experience of what you would hear from nature and the surrounding landscape. Now to listen to Scottish music beautifully synthesized. Engaging and enthralling.
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Donja - Like a synthesized harp/piano shifting into a slow guitar tune as if drifting with the music. Ethnic sounds like in a close knit village. Isolated yet with a sense of belonging within the culture.
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To Wake A Dream In Moving Water - Echoing electronic guitar notes. the music flows smoothly like a gentle current. Angelic voices enter and add to the building richness. Notes pluck like droplets of water hitting water. The music picks up its pace as if moving past rocks traveling in a direction given set in a higher untouched realm. 'If we're one and the same, who is guiding the game. In a sleep to go home where all is well again. . . . .' A beautiful song.
"I certainly believe in going within to find a connection with the outer world. To find the 'child' within where everything is open to speculation and wonder...it's a sort of 'psychic' connection for me, and music is simply part of the process." ~ Ethan Matthews
To find out more about Echo Us and his music go to:
Denise L. @DL7855 2018