Completing their second album has been a long road in every sense for alternative rockers Echo Machine.
The Dundee band re-emerged after the uncertainty of lockdown with a new line-up before touring all over Europe last year alongside androgynous icons Placebo.
They’ve since been relatively low profile, but return to the spotlight as part of an impressive Beat Generator festive line-up next Saturday that also includes indie veterans Spare Snare and Sheffield lo-fi exponents Rrrapid-Kool, with comedian Phillip Jupitus and artist Celie Byrne hosting.
It’s part of the build-up to the arrival of Echo Machine’s successor to their 2020 debut album Instant Transmissions.
Due for release on Assai Recordings in March, Accidental Euphoria will feature the first new material from Gary Moore and Mike McFarlane since the pair recruited Dundee-raised keys guru Lewis Bage, as well as ex-Amorettes bassist Heather McKay and her drummer sister Hannah.
It was that five-piece that played mainland Europe’s arena with Placebo, an experience their frontman describes as “absolutely insane”.
Berlin venue ‘so big we needed a map’
“A lot of promoters wanted local supports to keep the costs down, so coming from Scotland we had to do quite a lot of creative planning around the tour to pull it off,” Gary explains.
“One night we got an overnight Megabus across Germany and went straight to play in front of 17,000 people in Berlin. It was basically about finding the cheapest hotels and the cheapest transport we could, just to somehow make it all happen.
“Me and Mike had done a few support tours and festivals in our last band The Mirror Trap, but those gigs in Germany were bigger. I had to get Google Maps out at one point to find my way around the venue in Berlin, it was so big.
“That was completely wild, then the eastern European dates out in Tallinn and those kinds of places were just absolutely incredible – the sort of places we’d normally never get to go to.”
The band have spent much of the past couple of years working on the new album, and perfectionist Moore admits it’s been a process that’s tested his resolve.
Echo Machine abandoned ‘cold’ album
“There’s at least one half-recorded album that was abandoned because we were working with the same producer or doing the same sort of stuff as on our first record,” he reveals.
“By that point we’d reached the stage where we were feeling properly like a band and were playing as a band live. Everything felt much more human, whereas the style of the production felt like an attempt to shoehorn that back into colder, more electronic material.
“There were lots of studio tricks that just didn’t feel right when we tried to play those songs. It felt flat instantly and I knew we just had to get in a room and try to record things as live as we could.”
They finally nailed Accidental Euphoria at Seagate Studios in Dundee, with both Moore and McFarlane taking on production duties alongside mixer Graeme Watt.
Following last year’s singles Immediacy, Futureland and The Cage, the latest track to emerge is the anthemic The Stranger, which takes the template provided by such post-punk legends as Magazine, The Skids and, in particular, The Chameleons, and adds a potent cocktail of 21st century tension and catharsis.
New record is ‘five humans in a room making a racket’
Gary says the song is “pretty representative” of what’s on the new LP, with a more self-reflective lyrical stance than before.
“I think we picked that one because we thought it might catch people a little off guard,” he adds.
“It definitely is at the more guitar-orientated edge of the record – the sound of five humans in a room making a racket.”
Looking ahead to next week’s gig, Gary says he’s keen to road test the new material – with plans to step up gigging activities when the album is out.
“We’re going to be doing a bunch of record shop gigs round about release time,” he explains.
“We did that around the last album and it was a great success. It was the kind of thing we’d never thought about before, but you encounter a whole different type of fan.
“So that’s the first port of call before a proper run of shows.”
Echo Machine play Beat Generator in Dundee on December 23.
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