It’s afternoon on a cloudy day in August 2009. A man sits on a hardwood floor beside a window, an effects board in front of his crossed legs. A woman sits at her keyboard nearby, and begins to play a tune she’d written recently. A switch is flicked, the exchange begins, the delay effect pumps on, and the simple piano melody becomes a chanting, rolling thing, begging for lyrics, basslines, harmonies, power. This is how Echo Echo started writing music.
Echo Echo is Andrea Caswell and Joel Corriveau. The pair began meeting and writing regularly in Corriveau’s home studio. An early 3 track demo garnered a grant from the Ontario Arts Council in 2009, which gave the fledgling duo with the confidence they needed to continue recording.
“All of a sudden it was like Hey, maybe other people will actually like this!” Caswell jokes. Corriveau agreed, “We need to get this out of the basement!”
Following a brief hiatus during which Corriveau got busy with wife and child and Caswell released a solo EP, the two friends came together again, had a good long listen to what they had made a few months before, and decided to get it out there.
Echo Echo’s debut EP “Catch” is a 4-song exploration of the various colours of love: unconditional adoration as presented in “Close Your Eyes”; the pain of rejection and attempting to conform to win another’s favor in “Guitar”; the obsessive nature of infatuation with what you cannot have in “Je m’obsesse”; and striving to let go in “Stratosphere”. Caswell’s vocals lead with emotional vulnerability that often gets lost within the electro-pop genre. Corriveau’s creative engineering produces unique sonic backdrops. The songs are varied, pulling between the rhythm-heavy dance sensibilities of house and the airy, weightless textures of new-wave and ambient styles.
Echo Echo is supported in part by
the Ontario Arts Council.