Official website – Echokammer – Bandcamp
So I continue my journey (this list will be updated 1-3 times a week until 2015 depending on my engagements) with an album that, quite frankly, is at the same time super heavy and super accessible. It’s not a kind release, it’s completely action-packed, and yet, from personal experience, if you put it as soft background music in a public place, you automatically arise curiosity : “is that some David Bowie I don’t know?” “Wow what’s playing?” Or when it’s on a shuffle playlist “oh put that other artist before again, you know the rockabilly one”
Daniel Murena, along with Albert Pöschl, Dizzy Errol, Joe Masi and Tagar (all completely out of this world artists that I love fondly), produced the multi-faceted album Ghoaster Coaster. Multi-faceted in the sense that, even after 40 listens, you still learn new things about its layers, the underneath vocals, the truly brilliant pieces of guitar work…
… Just like this subtle grating in Girls in the Street switching from left to right at a fast-pace, that adds a layer of rhythmic urgency. Damn I had not noticed it yet, I have to listen to the song again to see when it creeps in (update : godddsss it’s so good).
“1, 2, 3, 4!”
Everytime I listen to Side A (Ehren to Good Friend) I always imagine a crowd of tattooed chicks with colourful hair frenetically dancing in the red glow of the Milla Club. It’s the fast-paced side, it’s guitar solos and earworm lyrics and “you think the song was over, no it’s not, and even when it’s over, next song is not the time to go out for a smoke”.
I’d love to pick up a favorite song on Side A, but honestly, it reads as a whole so SO SO well, from the “welcome to hell” kick in the face that is Ehren und Preisen, the great build-ups of Tribal Girl, the overall amazingness that are Happy Anton and Party Pussy (I have NO words to describe my love for these two songs, and Girl Ghost is such a great bridge between the two). And then on with the epic end of this epic side (I can’t cease to wonder the pacing of the live shows though) :Good Friend has some fucked-up-incredible-unbelievable-incorrigible climax and it’s. just. plain. perfect. *6k-something-feedback*
The B Side starts with “Where’s my queen?” in Nervous Teen (fun fact : never google Nervous Teen Murena Murena, it’s all porn) and the question will hang in the air until the end of the album. I love how this record is constructed for vinyl listening : It’s like it’s not moving the same fluids Side A moved : Side A makes your body dizzy, Side B leaves your mind breathless.
Bored Game is plainly a life changing experience??? To be honest I remember the first time I listened to it (really listened and absorbed it all) : there was no wind, no other noise than the snow crunching under my boots as I made my way back home in the empty streets of uptown Montreal at 3 in the morning. It doesn’t happen a lot, that feeling of time stopping for you to fully appreciate a song, for it to encrypt itself in your mind and for the environment to leak in to the memory.
You wake up from that beauty-driven numbness to flickering fluorescent lights with Girls in the Street, the epitome of “music I’d like to hear on the radio”. It even has a fade-out in the end!
The Brume and Daze combo is so beautifully constructed that I cannot even say anything about it without fearing I missed out a huge chunk of it. So. Many. Layers. So. Beautiful. Go listen NOW.
And then Strung Out. Based on the Strung Out speech by Elvis in 1974. It’s super ludic when you know the reference. I love it.
“Thank you very much.”