Tag Archives: Echoes of Zoo

Mixtape #148

01 June 2023


June is here and what better way to set the mood than with our monthly mixtape, this time round kindly curated by Belgian quartet Echoes of Zoo, who released last month an electrifying and exhilarating second album, Speech of Species. Founded by multi-instrumentalist and composer Nathan Daems, and also comprising Bart Vervaeck, Lieven Van Pée and Falk Schrauwen, the band experiments with a dense jungle of sounds and influences as diverse as psychedelic jazz, Eastern and Balkan sounds, West African grooves, dub and rock, with a punk attitude underpinning their approach to music. We’re ecstatic they put together this amazing genre-spanning mix, giving nods to the impressive diversity of influences at play in their music.

  1. Danyel Waro – Aneil [Cobalt]
  2. Ramiro Musotto – Majno Ma Bi [Los Años Luz Discos / Hélico]
  3. Black Flower – Deep Dive Down [Sdban Ultra]
  4. Orchestra Gold – Mako Diyara
  5. Echoes of Zoo – Different Frequencies [W.E.R.F.]
  6. Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force – Lamb Ji (feat. Mbene Diatta Seck) [Ndagga]
  7. Echoes of Zoo – Bee Jive [W.E.R.F.]
  8. Trance Plantations – Itinerary for a Blood Cell [W.E.R.F.]
  9. The Comet Is Coming – Birth of Creation [Impulse!]
  10. STUFF. – Slug [Sdban Ultra]
  11. Black Flower – Worshipper (Origami 3) [Zephyrus]
  12. Trance Plantations – It’s Alive
  13. Antonis Diamantidis Dalgas – Tis Xenitias O Ponos

Echoes of Zoo preview upcoming album with second single ‘Echolocation’

14 April 2023

Belgian outfit Echoes of Zoo announced last month the release of their new album titled Speech of Species, and alongside it shared ‘Bee Jive’, an exhilarating track with balkan inflections and tinged with oriental ebullience. Ahead of the album release on May 12th through W.E.R.F. Records, they are teasing the record again with second single ‘Echolocation’, a scorching and playful track fusing “cumbia with dub with rock with jazz”. As Echoes of Zoo describe, ‘Echolocation’ is “an ode to bats, dolphins and other species who use a unique principle to be able to see, in the form of a fat cumbia groove”. The single comes accompanied by an animated video made by Laura Matikainen and you can watch it below.

Echoes of Zoo announce second album, Speech of Species, and share first cut ‘Bee Jive’

06 March 2023

Photo: Grégoire Verbeke

Beginning life in Belgium in 2018, Echoes of Zoo is the brainchild project of Nathan Daems, also comprising Bart Vervaeck, Lieven Van Pée and Falk Schrauwen. Following their 2021 debut album, BREAKOUT, they have announced the release of a new album titled Speech of Species. Slated for a May 12th release through W.E.R.F. Records, the new record remains true to the quartet’s heady fusion of psychedelic jazz, dub and rock with a punk edge, and the feel-good feel of a marching band. Continuing to pour out a relentlessly pulsing sonic energy, on the upcoming album, Echoes of Zoo “experiment with Eastern and Balkan sounds, microtonal guitars, animalistic sounds, and a host of new rhythmic observations based on Brazilian and West African grooves”, as the press release describes. Speech of Species centres on the theme of animal communication, as Daems explains:

“Messages are constantly being transmitted in the animal world by adopting body poses; there are more than 2,000 different poses or “words” in certain lizard species, by dancing in the most ingenious ways, by changing colours from geometric patterns (certain species of squids and chameleons do this), by causing vibrations in the ground, by smells, even by giving light and so on. How can we be so blind to that and say that animals cannot speak?”

With balkan inflections and tinged with oriental ebullience, ‘Bee Jive’ serves as the first exhilarating taste to emerge from the album. The track is inspired by a chaotic beehive and “based on a Senegalese Sabar rhythm, spiced with short Balkan riffs on saxophone and an energetic oriental guitar solo”.  Take a listen below.