Photo: Alexander Deprez

Echoes of Zoo are gearing up to release their third album, Collective Intelligence, arriving on October 2nd through Rebel Up! and Zephyrus Records.. Led by founder and saxophonist Nathan Daems, alongside Bart Vervaeck, Lieven Van Pée and Falk Schrauwen, the Belgian quartet continue to refine a distinctive musical language that draws from jazz, psychedelic rock, dub, African rhythmic traditions and adventurous improvisation. Collective Intelligence takes inspiration from the ways animals coordinate as swarms, herds and flocks, using that natural intelligence as both a musical starting point and a hopeful call for humans to cooperate, communicate and face global challenges together. Daems comments:

“The collective intelligence that we’re after is reflected in the music in a direct way – by the way we play together and how we function as a band. When we play together, we act as one. We can only be a good band if we display a form of sophisticated collective intelligence.”

Following ‘Flock Logic’, the album’s exhilarating first single, which grew out of the band’s time touring Brazil in early 2024, Echoes of Zoo have unleashed a second single, the effervescent ‘Higher Levels’. The title draws directly on the album’s wider fascination with animal communication and coordination, as Daems explains:

“The title points to the sophisticated ways animals communicate and coordinate as one, to what we casually call telepathy, though that label says more about our own limits than what’s actually possible in nature.”

He adds:

“On this tune, we channel our love for the bittersweet melancholy of West African highlife, then push it into new territory with quarter tones — notes between the usual 12 pitches of piano and guitar — and time-stretched grooves that sit between strict mathematical subdivisions.”

Listen to ‘Higher Levels’ now.