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First releases are not always easy but here at ekkhho we couldn’t be happier to have Lord Skywave, dreamer and escapist par excellence, to help us begin our journey as a label with one big statement of an album, a master class of reverberation and hypnotism called “View From Other Side” difficult to see anywhere else. As the former singer of the band Simian, Lord Skywave (aka Simon Lord) is no stranger to the musical world but here, in his 2015 reincarnation, the rock and the pop are replaced by deconstructed drum machines and ethereal melodies all covered and compressed by an exquisite gaze of hiss.

His debut album as Lord Skywave, “Cardamon Copy”, from last year on the Astrodynamics label, already showed us where his new passions were going: beautiful melodies painting exotic landscapes. Meditation music maybe, like Grouper experimenting with synthesis, and his voice making this all a bit human. It felt like Simon wanted to leave everything behind to just take his 4-­‐track recorder and play everything he was imaginating. The final product was magical.

With “View From Other Side”, his second album, he picks things where he left off. Take first single “Marceline” as example; such an impressionist song is not easy to achieve, and even though he already took us on that path before, now structures take another meaning. It feels like Slowdive in their Pygmalion era but yet completely unique. Pop music has never felt this foggy.

All this talk can make us think his album is all about dream and lushness but that is definitely not the case. Distortion and darkness are all there too on “the conductor” or opener “black cat”. Reflexion and contemplation take over the whole second part of the record and from there we take off out to the stars. It feels like a night walk between nostalgia and glimpses from the future, everything is there and it seems so simple.
With Lord Skywave we never know where we will arrive and that’s clear in the last track “Wake Up Cat”. His far away voice now is clear and shouting, diluting everything by his side, taking us with him and just putting us in the present. It feels like a closing chapter for Simon but one that left us completely reassured.

ekkhho

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