Music Review // Echo Us "The Windsong Spires" (Absolute Probability Recordings)

https://echous.bandcamp.com/album/the-windsong-spires 

As a fair warning to the reader: If you are not prepared to take a musical journey then do not listen to "The Windsong Spires".    This isn't the type of album where you can put it on, get halfway through and then move onto something else.   It also isn't the type of album where I feel like you can pull too many songs out of context as singles and they all just really need to be listened to in order almost as if one long song makes up the entire album.

While the songs of Echo Us are not instrumental, there is an emphasis on the music over the vocals on this album for sure.   This is part of the reason why I feel many of the songs wouldn't translate as "singles" or really as well outside of the album itself.   But I really do love that quality about this album because it's what makes "The Windsong Spires" so special, so much more than feeling like just a collection of songs.

This music itself is rather complex.   Sometimes the percussion is so huge it feels as if it can fill an entire stadium, while other times it isn't even there.   There are a decent amount of pianos and when you first press play it can sound as if we're going into the score of a kung fu film.   I feel like it is post rock at times, but at other times it has that feeling of being at a RenFair, especially when Charlotte Engler comes in with the backing vocals.  

Sometimes this music is soft, other times it can be loud and in your face.  It can feel like we're watching a play unfold before our very eyes or like a movie from the 1980's.   There are just so many things happening here, but I feel like a movie is the best way to compare this because you wouldn't watch a movie for ten minutes or thirty minutes and then bail on it if it was two hours long.  No.  You press play, start the movie and watch it until it is over.  That's how I feel about this complex album which can feel as dramatic as it does magical.