Following a series of well-received releases from individual members (Vessel’s Order of Noise, Kahn & Neek’s ‘Percy’), Bristol collective Young Echo will release their debut album, Nexus, in the coming months.
Speaking to FACT, the group – comprised of El Kid, Vessel, Kahn and Zhou (a.k.a. Jabu and Ishan Sound) – reveal that Nexus‘s earliest material dates back to 2010, with “most of the tracks made by just one or two of us.” “What was difficult in the early stages”, they continue, “was finding the tracks that went well together. We all feel our music has a shared aesthetic, but actually making it work as a coherent album from start to finish has been a new experience for all of us.”
“We treated it as much as a compilation as a conventional album – most of the tracks were written before we had seriously began thinking about releasing an album as a group, so most of the music wasn’t necessarily written with this album in mind. Overall with this record it’s been more of a selection process to display the spectrum of our collective sound than a group writing process.”
“It was important that the album had a strong sense of cohesion – that it showcased not only the individual styles of each member but also attempted to join the dots between the various sounds within the group. The focus has been on collating the tracks that would make this possible. The Young Echo radio broadcasts have kept us meeting up on a monthly basis and have also given us an opportunity to share new music with each other, which influenced the tracks we were individually coming up with at that time. This project is really an attempt to communicate the vibe we share as a group and the radio shows preserve that energy.”
Nexus – which, as the group also pointed out to FACT, is an anagram of “nu sex” – will be released in May through Ramp Recordings, with a single, ‘Blood Sugar’, coming in April. You can watch the video for ‘Jupiter Rise’ below.
Tracklist:
1. Radial Sheaves
2. Jupiter Rise
3. Voices on the Water
4. Crowd Sacred
5. Blood Sugar
6. Earth & Dust (Version)
7. Untitled No. 7
8. Nexus
9. Flying
10. My Child My Chain
11. Umoja
12. Slow Jam
13. Eternities Never / Ephemeral Sometimes
