Album Review – Shatterproof by Echaskech
Just Records – Available from Amazon
8 out of 10
Echaskech continues their work from first album Skechbook on their newest release Shatterproof.
The collective of musicians, writers and producers Dom Hoare and Andy Gillham and various guest singers lay out their stall of intelligent dance music on the 11 tracks that make up the album.
Textures range from the trippy piano of On your Mind to the stark, dark sound of Future Sex, or the spectral sounds of Deserted, or the twin tracks of The Calm and The Storm.
Dreamy keyboard and vocal passages mix with drum programming that takes the listener into the sweaty clubs of the 1990s, or into more peaceful tracks, where the mind can switch of and just listen.
That is not to say that that is a bland album, it certainly is not. There is the right amount of contrast between the tracks, indeed, within the records to keep the listener entertained. There is no way that this can be compared to Moby’s Play. Hoare and Gillham know what they are doing, and have enough technical savvy and musical sense to pull off an album of fully realised sounds and musical soundscaping of the highest quality.
I am looking forward to the next album already.
benmacnair 