There’s been talk of a debut joint album from Bristol’s Young Echo collective for some time now. The crew – consisting of Kahn, Vessel, El Kid, Zhou, Jabu, Ishan Sound, Killing Sound, Gorgon Sound, REI and Baba Yaga – have been busily releasing a whole variety of music under their solo guises and in collaboration with one another over the past few years. Now they’ve announced that their debut album, entitled Nexus, will be released through Ramp Recordings on 27th May, and will be preceded by a single, ‘Blood Sugar’, at the end of April. You can watch the video for album track ‘Jupiter Rise’ below.
The Young Echo crew are among a new generation of the city’s producers inspired by the Bristol dubstep and grime scene, as well as drawing influence from Jamaican musics, techno, experimental ambient sounds and more. Each individual member has been making decent waves themselves – Vessel’s Order Of Noise album was released through Tri Angle last year, Kahn has been re-booting grime and dancehall in collaboration with Neek as well as releasing dubby club tracks and more song-based material, El Kid’s dusty house has been finding its way into the world via labels such as Immerse and Left Blank, et cetera.
We’ve hosted a series of great mixes from Young Echo members on the Quietus over the last 18 months – most recently, one from Zhou a couple of weeks ago, but also older instalments from El Kid and Vessel.
This marks the first time they’re releasing as a group and it would seem that the tracklist avoids informing listeners which member produced each track, suggesting this may be a fully collaborative effort. It runs as follows:
‘Radial Sheaves’
‘Jupiter Rise’
‘Voices On The Water’
‘Crowd Sacred’
‘Blood Sugar’
‘Earth & Dust (Version)’
‘Untitled No. 7’
‘Nexus’
‘Flying’
‘My Child, My Chain’
‘Umoja’
‘Slow Jam’
‘Eternities, Never / Ephemeral, Sometimes’
