Mirror Image

Description

Dans Mirror Image, Echo Collective continues to explore contemporary and experimental classical music, combined with captivating and hypnotic soundscapes. This album brings together acoustic research conducted in immersive environments: 4DSound at Monom in Berlin, DNB Soundscape at CCHasselt in Belgium, and Wave Field Synthesis with the dance company AOI in Chatham, UK. Inspired by these new technological tools, Echo Collective recorded Mirror Image in an eclectic mix of famous and inspiring acoustic spaces: a historic library in Ravenna, Italy, a church in Margaret's childhood countryside, La Savonnerie in Brussels, Dada Studio in Brussels, and at home.
Nestled somewhere in Berlin, the Monom recording studio is like an extraordinary refuge transporting those who come to infuse their inspirations into another dimension. Sheltered from the world, forty-eight monitors with the precision of a craftsman capture sound in such a way that it circulates in loops. Like in the cinema, the system is immersive. “It’s an extraordinary listening sensation. You feel like you’re traveling without really knowing where you are. All our senses are on alert,” note Margaret Hermant and Neil Leiter. A few months ago, the two founding members of Echo Collective spent time at Monom during a residency. Very quickly, the drafts of neo-classical melodies crafted with the unique equipment at their disposal became powerful compositions. There was something of an epiphany. “Our ideas took the shape of a founding project for two. Everything we had done together until now seemed to come together,” say the two friends. It was there, at Monom, that the story of Mirror Image, Echo Collective's first EP, was born. A record like an initiatory precipitate, at the crossroads of everything that has been experienced and everything that deserves to be explored.
At the beginning, in the story of Echo Collective, there is the eminent Royal Conservatory of Brussels, Belgium. Passionate and brilliant disciples, Margaret Hermant and Neil Leiter learn the details of great classical music, that of the masters and chamber orchestras of four or five. The Belgian plays the harp and violin while the American, expatriated following a university exchange, plays the viola. After their studies, the two young people logically join traditional ensembles. But along the way, through encounters and challenges, they suddenly discover a new life: neo-classical. With these chords, the possibilities seem endless. The sound takes on flesh, it unfolds as if trying to repeat the accents from outside, in nature. Everything is more airy, more symphonic, and more moving, in the manner of film soundtracks. “It’s totally different from the codified language of classical music. We are not confined by an instrument. We compose what we want to compose. Neo-classical is music of freedom,” specifies Margaret Hermant.
With this new desire, the two conservatory friends come closer together to eventually become Echo Collective. In 2012, they collaborated on stage with the pioneering duo A Winged Victory For The Sullen, composed of the famous Dustin O’Halloran and Adam Wiltzie. New associations will follow alongside other figures in the genre such as Johann Johannsson and Daniel O’Sullivan. In 2018, Margaret Hermant and Neil Leiter, both amateur rock musicians in their spare time, also made a name for themselves with their reinterpretation of Radiohead's Amnesia. Two years later, they released their first album, The See Within.
“With Mirror Image, we worked like we had never done before. In Berlin, we produced sounds that laid the foundations for new compositions. To record these, we then chose different places, depending on the atmosphere and acoustics we wanted,” details Neil Leiter. Thus, the recording of the EP resembled a strange treasure hunt, from the old stones of an abbey located in Margaret Hermant's hometown in Belgium, to a studio with magical pedals in England, passing through the high ceiling of a library in Ravenna, Italy. It was indeed in this last place, in the midst of a decor of frescoes and century-old beams, that Echo Collective recorded in one take, after a few minutes of improvisation, the famous “Dante,” the flagship track of the EP. “It was a matter of moment, energy, creation,” says Margaret Hermant. Carried notably by the lace of the harp, Mirror Image seems to push sound, its echo, and its harmonies into previously unexplored territories, as if everything were controlled by an extraordinary modular console. Effects that evoke a universe both intimate and expansive, organic. “It feels like a juxtaposition of the worlds of the city and nature,” summarizes the pair from Echo Collective.
First release on naïve - a “pride for the historical eclecticism that the label represents” according to Echo Collective - Mirror Image will lead to a tour across Europe. Alongside sound engineer Fabien Lesieur, the mastermind behind the EP, the two members of the duo will present themselves in a unique staging: with their instruments and machines, they will be surrounded by the audience. A setup that could take place in studios, theaters, and other special locations to best convey the intoxicating whirlwind of their music. So that one can be completely captivated by their new world.