Andy’s Echo produces and performs electronic music with live guitar, vocals and synths. The multi-instrumentalist, singer and live act cultivates 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.

Great to talk to you Andy. How are things with you?

Thank you for having me! I’m eagerly awaiting the festival season.

What can you tell our readers over here about your musical journey?

I started singing, playing the guitar and writing songs when I was 15. Me and three friends started a band, so we learned to write and arrange music in rehearsals.

A few years later I went to my first rave in Frankfurt at U60311 and got interested in electronic music and rave culture. I began producing music and tried to combine what I did in bands with club music. I enjoy the process of exploring the areas between genres and electronic music is the perfect playground for that because it’s in a way very free and ‘fluid’.

You’re a wizard both on stage and in the studio. Would you say you are more comfortable as a live act or as a producer? Or do they both go hand in hand?

Thanks for the compliment! They go hand in hand and I enjoy both roles. But producing often also is a lot of work and I sometimes get angry with my self when I am uninspired and repeating myself. But it is extremely satisfying when you manage to translate a feeling you had into music.

And playing live is like the next step of that process. When you play your own songs on stage and see how the music you created out of an emotion translates back into feelings in your crowd – that is extremely rewarding.
And the free drinks are pretty neat, too.

Is it important to you to keep evolving as an artist?

Absolutely. I don’t like to repeat myself too often. But I sometimes struggled with that during the pandemic. When the amount of new experiences you make is dramatically reduced because the cultural and social life is cut back by lockdowns and restrictions – how do you stay inspired? But yes, I hope that I’ll keep evolving. I already have some ideas to collaborate with visual artists and would like to perform my music with a band in the future.

Can you name some of the artists that have inspired the music that you make today?

Mostly electronic live acts like Weval, WhoMadeWho and Monolink but also bands like Roosevelt, Sylvan Esso and Tame Impala. And I think I am eternally influenced by The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and such artists because that’s what I listened to endlessly when I started playing the guitar.

You’re about to drop your next release on Katermukke – Fire EP. The title track is super fresh and so is the remix by Dirty Doering! How did this cut come to life?

‘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 kind of an act of defiance, I wanted to produce a song that feels very energetic expresses how it feels to be very alive.

What can we hope to see from Andy’s Echo in 2022?

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.

BEATPORT

 

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