Echo Movement – Love & The Human Outreach
Tracklist:
1.) Rising Sunset
2.) Spaceship Earth
3.) Sea Level
4.) A Wake behind
5.) In Good Time
6.) Around The Sun
7.) Entangled
8.) Love and the Human Outreach
9.) Play It Cool
10.) Pale Blue Dream
The Pier Album Rating:
Release Date: September 4th, 2012
Record Label: Jersey Shore Island Beat
Official Website: Echo Movement Website
Group Background:
Echo Movement is about love. It’s about a passion to learn, communicate and appreciate life’s opportunities. It’s a recognition of the ability to choose your level of involvement in humanity. It’s respect for the earth and our global community and an honor to the pursuit of happiness. It’s a shrine to the human range of emotions. It’s an expression of music, culture and freedom. Echo Movement is about love, and that is all you need.
Echo Movement has always had a niche for sculpting their music through unorthodoxy. Their fourth album Music Played On featured binaural beats, which is the manipulation of tones and frequencies to create different “acoustic illusions”.
With their 2012 album Love and the Human Outreach, sounds created using data collected by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. The 6 month project drew help from the SETI Institute, PlanetHunters.org and the Sonification Lab at Georgia Tech to produce audio from binary star system. The results were composed into melodies used on the album’s title track.
Album Review:
Echo Movement’s visionary musical spirit bred with what some call a “new reggae” metamorphosis is not only a thrill for the ears, but is well endowed as the ultimate mind-twister as well. Despite the scanty track list, Love & The Human Outreach concentrated genuine musicianship and creativity into a ten-tracked album mostly consisted of hazy island reggae rhythms and spacely messages. I found a great sonic balance between acoustic beach music such as in Play It Cool and rhythm-driven jams that one could comfortably bounce to in a live setting.
Since their debut in 2005, the east coast six-piece has overwhelmingly fine-tuned their reggae prowess. Each album becomes more intricately engineered than the previous, and they indeed have withstood a quantum leap in their own little reggae niche.
In my favorite song “Entangled”, the band not only remixes popular classical music, but singer Stephen Fowler sings about being far from his love with the ability to know the others true feelings, drawing a parallel between a commonly accepted quantum theory in modern science.
A phonograph attached to the 1977 Voyager I and II spacecrafts recorded the pulsars used to record a six second loop transfixed into the title track, “Love & The Human Outreach”. The melodies came from the furthest man-made object from Earth, which is only one contributor to Echo Movement’s exploratory-type vibe.
The album kicks off with one of the best skunking instrumentals of the year; featuring dueling guitars, cosmic keys, and a quite meddlesome attitude. The dreamy harmonies echoed later with some of the instrumental finesse replaced by a fleet of symphonized vocalists in the song “Pale Blue Dream”.
Echo Movement’s vibe in their newest album should serve as a model of auditory aestheticism, especially in the reggae genre. With messages about human evolution, our capabilities, and even the theory of quantum entanglement, Echo Movement has projected their lyrical limelight into the future, encompassing the nature of the universe. Once again, Echo Movement comes out firing with a unique effort; one that will surely startle the scene.
Written & Reviewed By: Matt Emodi
[Editors Note: All reviews are reflective of the album in it’s entirety, from start to finish. These reviews are the honest opinion of each writer/reviewer, expressing their feedback as a genuine fan of the music. Each star rating reflects their review of the album, not the band. Music is subjective. Regardless of the review or star rating, we encourage you to listen to the music yourself & form your own opinion. Spread the awareness of all music in its art & contribution]