The fifth album from this US project.
Echo Us is Ethan Matthews with help from two other contributors. The lineup is synths, piccolo flute, guitars, bodhran, dulcimer, flute, viola, violin and some vocals.
I reviewed his third album, the 2010 album Tomorrow Will Tell The Story back in April 2011 and was not impressed by that album. You can read my review here.
Echo Us is still a prog rock project. Though with a different take on progressive rock than I am used to.
Take symphonic prog as the base and add a massive amount of electronica here. There is also some ambient music here.
The music is also very folk rock influenced although that is not easy to detect because the music is performed with lots of synths. But the piccolo flute and the flute is clearly giving us some Irish folk music.
This album is just over one hour long and it is an interesting take on symphonic prog. Yes, symphonic prog is not just the 1970s sound. Ethan Matthews has just removed those days instruments and replaced them with flutes and synths..... and dulcimer and guitars.
This is something that should have been a nasty car crash of an album. A turkey. It is not. Echo Us and Ethan Matthews has actually delivered a good album and one open minded symphonic prog fans will really like..... after overcoming the shock. This is indeed a good album and Echo Us is now in my good books.
3 points
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