Directly from the coast of northern Germany reaches us a new banger by Andy’s Echo on the label KATERMUKKE. Andy’s Echo produces and performs electronic music with live guitar, vocals and synths. The Hamburg-based multi-instrumentalist, singer and live act cultivate a unique sound that combines high energy electronic beats, meshing guitar licks, songwriting, dreamy vocals and trippy sound design. This amounts to genre-bending and exceptionally danceable music, ranging from technoid to melancholic with a psychedelic feel. Let’s have a chat with this versatile artist from Germany.
Connect with Andy’s Echo on Soundcloud | Instagram
Hello Andy, thank you for your time. How are things going?
Hi and thank you for having me! I am excited about clubs and festivals coming back to life and can’t wait to be on stage again!
Please explain what characterizes your music style? Was it always like this and if not how did you get to this point?
Before I got into electronic music I played in bands as a songwriter, guitarist and singer. So I originally learned to write and arrange music not in front of a computer but in rehearsal rooms with instruments that are unusual in dance music. I try to combine some of the “band-music”-approaches with electronic music and explore the areas in-between genres.
And which equipment you are using live these days to bring Andy’s Echo signature Sound to the stage?
On stage, I sing into an Audix microphone and play a Fender Telecaster electric guitar. I have two midi controllers with which I take care of everything within Ableton. Especially the guitar and the vocals run through a variety of effect chains.
I built some effect racks in Ableton so I can manipulate the sound of my voice and my guitar during the songs and I like to play with tape delay emulations and everything that sounds trippy.
Everything runs on a 10-year-old Macbook which gladly hasn’t died on me yet and sometimes I wonder how this is even possible.
What are some of the key bits of music-making gear in your current set-up in the studio?
First of all, I produce in Logic Pro. And I don’t have too much gear, so I have to make the most out of what I have (or grab stuff from my flatmates). Synth-wise, I heavily rely on my Poly D (a Minimoog clone from Behringer) and the K-2 (a clone of the Korg MS-20).
The Telecaster, an Epiphone Lucille and a cheap Squire short-scale bass are my most used guitars.
And I have a fog machine in my room that I sometimes activate while producing. Sounds weird but it helps to get the mojo working. No joke.
How do you work, do you have an idea in your head you work towards or do you just experiment and jam and see what happens?
I try to vary the approaches to producing songs because I’m afraid to repeat myself too often. I want to avoid that. I wrote the first part (the vocal part or break or however you want to call it) of the song on my guitar in my room, classical songwriting like I did it when I played in bands. Afterwards, I jammed around with my K-2 and came up with the arpeggios around which I created the whole beat.
Afterwards, I put them together into one song. I like the contrast they create because the vocal part is rather atmospheric and trippy and after the drop, it becomes very energetic and the synths scream into your face.
Tell us about your release on KATERMUKKE called Fire – what inspired or influenced it?
‘Fire’ is about feeling like you are bursting with energy. That’s an emotional state I was thirsting for a lot during the pandemic. But I rarely felt it because the reduction of social and cultural life often left me dispirited, bored, annoyed and depressed.
As a kind of an act of defiance, I wanted to produce a song that feels very energetic and expresses how it feels to be very alive if that makes any sense.
It comes with a nice live video – could you tell us where it has been recorded?
It was filmed last summer when I played at Wurzelfestival and opened the Märchenwald stage. That was a highlight because there weren’t too many opportunities to play gigs in 2021 for young artists.
The video was produced by video wizard brothers Boris and Sandro (aka Brotherside) who did an incredible job at catching the vibe of the song.
What else have you got coming up/are you working on?
Apart from the release on Katermukke, I will put out EPs on Stil vor Talent and 3000º Records. I will be on tour with the 3000º crew, play lots of gigs and also return to South Africa for which I am extremely thrilled.
