Hunck Release "Something Missing" EP

Great time at @hunckband EP launch last nght. Now going to go back to 1996 so I can listen to their cassette ;) 

A photo posted by Zygmunt (@zygmuntday) on Dec 12, 2014 at 6:53am PST

Our friends in the band Hunck have just released a tape of jangly and heartfelt drone-pop; they played a launch show last night at The Finsbury and it was great. I had a lot of pints of Guinness, but it was great anyway. Check it out / get a copy here:

We will hopefully be playing together in March 2015.

Prisoner II Single Press

So far the single has been written about / posted at the following places:

Bernie Brooks of A Ship In The Woods made us blush with this lovely write-up: http://look.shipinthewoods.com/post/103556062418/on-prisoner-ii-by-zygmunt-day-echo-pressure

We Close Tonight featured us on their December playlist:http://weclosetonight.com/2014/11/24/i-have-been-mostly-listening-to-16/

And Tom Johnson of GoldFlakePaint named us one of his Fresh Licks (and worked out that I secretly want to be in a dystopian electro-pop band -- we would all wear grey shirts and white make-up):http://www.goldflakepaint.co.uk/fresh-licks-zygmunt-day-echo-pressure-prisoner-ii/

Prisoner II Video & Single

Here it is:

Single, remix, b-side:

Enjoy.

Azealia Banks Remix Competition

I decided to enter the Azealia Banks remix contest for 'Chasing Time', largely cos I've got a new FM synth vst (PG-8X) that I'm becoming obsessed with.

The master is a bit squashed, not perfect, but it's not too bad for a laptop job.

Here is the resulting track, got definite Northern bassline vibes:




You can grab the stems here if you're interested: http://azealiabanks.com/remix/

Press Release: Prisoner II Video & Single

Zygmunt Day & Echo Pressure will be releasing a video for ‘Prisoner II’ on November 24^th 2014. The song will also be released digitally as a single, with two b-sides: ‘Imprisoner,’ a sparse electro re-work of the song from Uther Moads, and ZD & Echo Pressure’s ‘Come On Baby Please’, a piece of guitar-pop pastiche featuring Sophie Jamieson.

“‘Prisoner II’ is a song written over the course of several years and is mainly about loneliness; I wrote the song in my head whilst being stationed in various mist-cloaked environments, such as Cambridge in the UK and Makkum in the Netherlands, where I spent autumn and winter 2012-13 working in a shipyard. One of the overriding feelings of being in these situations was a longing for a respite from the cold and the work in human connection: some kind of intimacy, warmth and familiarity. I also missed family and home. The idea of the video draws on this experience; it follows somebody who finds himself alone in a bleak environment, who unexpectedly finds a connection with an abandoned dog.” – Zygmunt

The video was filmed on the North-West coast of the UK during the tail end of hurricane Gonzalez by award-winning photographer and film maker Ben Jacobs. It was very windy. Bonnie the dog (above, in still), however, was a real pro on set.

‘Prisoner II’ also features trumpet playing from Patch & The Giant’s Angie Rance.

This will be the second official single released from ZD & Echo Pressure’s album, On Streets That Know, which came out in June this year, to a small but encouraging amount of critical acclaim.

The video will be released on November 24^th on YouTube, Vimeo and Clowdy. The single will be released simultaneously on SoundCloud and Bandcamp.

Gig at The Stag's Head, Hoxton // 24th October 2014 // with Aretes

Aretes are a great band. We first played with them at The Nest months ago, but I've been listening to their album ever since. There are a few genuinely excellent songs on their debut, particularly the sad and haunting emigration anthem "All My Sons And Daughters", which is my favourite song. They are a great band and their album is well worth your time:

We played some new songs, including the ones we recorded in Madrid, it was the first public airing of one of them, and it seemed to go ok. 

The Stags Head night looks likely to become a monthly fixture, so keep an ear to the ground.

Gig at The Troubadour, Earl's Court // 12th September 2014 // with Oak, Tom Figgins and Hattie Briggs

We were out of our comfort zone in West London for this one. The show was a charity gig to raise money for children with cancer (the first of 12, more info here: https://www.facebook.com/thepowerofsoundbeyondcancer?fref=ts).

I had been working all day on a building site in St. Pauls and I was pretty exhausted but felt up for it. Even more so as everyone soundchecked and However my voice was still giving me a bit of trouble so I went out and got a bottle of Courvoisier so that I could at least soothe my throat a bit. 

The Troubadour is a nice venue. They put out free popcorn on the tables and they have a beer called Rothaus which is apparently very nice and costs £5.95 per pint in a heavy German glass. The house drum kit costs £10 for bands to hire, which is perhaps a fair price for wear and tear, however if bands are paying £10 each and there are five bands playing that night, it's a bit of a tax. You have to pay for the popcorn somehow I spose.

The night was largely acoustic musicians, who talked to each other about who their managers were during soundcheck, and made sure to tell the audience that their latest single release that was on iTunes between songs. I suppose that's fair enough. The Troubadour has always seemed to me, though, like a venue where everyone is on the make.

Tom Figgins (https://twitter.com/tomfiggins) was very accomplished. He played a song on a Nord Stage 3 piano about his mother which was quite moving.

To be honest though I was looking forward to getting up there and making a lot of noise. So we got up and set up, and I had my bottle of Courvoisier there just in case, and then the barmaid saw it and confiscated it off the stage just before we were about to start. I had my guitar plugged in already so I couldn't really stop and get off stage to get it back, plus she was pissed off that I'd brought it in. I wasn't trying to take the piss, but rather I had it there as moral support for my throat. Which, as might be expected, gave out in about the third song, and it's a load of shit, and it's really pissing me off. Three weeks in a row now I've had to cut the set short because of my voice. I've got an appointment booked at the doctors, so I'm gonna sort it out. But it's so annoying.

I did eventually sweet-talk the barmaid into giving me my brandy back.

Gig totals: 

Wines (West London, when in Rome): 2 free (1 red - Zygmunt 1 white - Nath)

£5.95 pints of Rothaus - 1

Other free drinks: 6

Bottles of Courvoisier confiscated: 1

Bottles of Courvoisier later returned: 1

Apologies made to barmaids: 1

Gig at The Underbelly, Hoxton Square // 5th September 2014 // with Hoatzin, Rafiki and Justin Lavash

A quiet gig at the Underbelly, where we drank a few warm beers and my voice gave out again mid-song. We had to cut the set short in the end. It was pretty annoying. Hoatzin were a great, tight mathy three piece. I bought their EP after the show which you can hear / download here:

Gotta sort my voice out somehow I guess. Pretty annoying.

Gig totals:

Beers: 8 free warm Heinekens

Brandies: 0 :(

Albums sold: 0

Other bands EPs bought: 1

Magnus Loom - Gilded Bumf

Our sometime saxophone player Joe Murgatroyd has just released this eccentric and lyrically meta track from his new project Magnus Loom (https://soundcloud.com/magnusloom). 'ave a gandaaaaaaaa

We're in the new issue of the East End Review

Pick up your copy at your local East London cafe / bar / pub / venue / barbers now.

[link to the review to follow, when it goes up]

Gig at The Stag's Head, Hoxton // 30th August 2014 // with Tom Jacobson and Uther Moads DJ

Last night we were joined at The Stag's Head in Hoxton by Tom Jacobson (https://soundcloud.com/tomjacobson) and had a DJ set of acid house and all-out DnB from Rhodri of Uther Moads.

The Stag is a great pub to have a gig at, with reasonably priced drinks, reasonably priced pizza, and generally just a nice atmosphere. It's tucked away down Orsman Road, so it feels a bit secret, but when you get the right night on there it can be incredible.

We went on around 10pm, and our set was going pretty well until about the 4th song in when I inexplicably lost my voice. I managed to croak my way through one of our new songs, before Sophie Jamieson arrived with a glass of magic throat balm, otherwise known as Courvoisier. It worked for Napoleon, and it usually works for me.

We got extremely sweaty, and Sophie J joined us onstage to sing the outro of Wanderers.

Then Rhodri of Uther Moads stepped behind the decks and played us out.

Gig totals:

Pints of ale: 3

Brandies: 1

Albums sold: 1

Nice tune from Tom:

Madrid Day 6

We're in Madrid this week recording at Mr. Soul Estudio in the Barrio de la Concepcion.

Sunday was Gin and Nathan's last day in the studio so we spent the morning finishing and refining any guitar and bass overdubs. We also added group handclaps to one of the songs, which involved standing round a microphone and counting. In the end we finished all the instruments for one more song than we originally thought we'd get done, which is a bonus.

In the evening we tried going out to what we'd heard was "the Dalston of Madrid", Lavapieds, and was busy on a Sunday night. But there was nobody about, and in fact, most of the bars were closing by the time we got there, but we had a curry and a few beers anyway. BRITS ABROAD.

Madrid Day 5

We're in Madrid this week recording at Mr. Soul Estudio in the Barrio de la Concepcion. 

We started the morning recording David's Hammond organ which he mended overnight. It was hooked up to a Leslie cabinet which gave it the magic oscillating sound. We recorded organ on two of the songs, and then I sat down at the piano and put a ridiculously jaunty piano part on another song.

It's great to be in a studio where we can have access to so many different, good quality instruments and bits of equipment. Having everything together in one place makes recording simple, so we can focus on getting good takes and sorting out the arrangement. David's equipment has taken years to collect from second hand shops, eBay, friends of friends and other places, and a lot of it he has fixed and restored himself. A really noticeable thing about using some of the gear he has is that we get better results from it in less time; putting one of his valve Neumanns next to something and recording it through a Neve channel strip means you can skip a lot of the extra recording and processing that you need to make decent sounds with cheaper equipment. There's also an element of unpredictability and grittiness to antique analogue gear, but you can also push things like microphones harder without any nasty distortion. It's been interesting to use these things.

Madrid Day 4

We're in Madrid recording this week at Mr. Soul studios in the Barrio de la Concepcion district. The studio has a lot of vintage gear from the 60s and 70s.

In the morning we were back in the studio to record acoustic guitars. Gin recorded a Framus acoustic with unwound strings and I used a 60s Martin D3 which sounded like the kind of harps that angels play.

Then we started percussion, adding shaker, tambourine, vibraslap, bongos and triangle. Don't underrate the triangle. Percussion took an unexpectedly long time to do. But that's the way it goes when you're writing parts as you're recording them.

At lunchtime we walked to the Plaza de Toros, or bullring, to find out when the fight was. It turned out there was a big fight that evening so we agreed we'd watch it if we finished recording in time. It was one of the first times we'd been out in the middle of the day in Madrid and the heat and brightness of the sun was intense. I got back to the studio feeling dazed.

We tried to use the Hammond organ after lunch, but one of the tubes in the Leslie speaker was ringing, so we decided to wait a day, as David said he could fix it that evening. So I recorded the rest of my distorted guitars whilst the others eventually went to see the bullfight. I used some fuzz pedals for one of the first times. It was good to make some really ugly noise. I also laid down my first recorded guitar solo to date. So that's something to tell my grandchildren about.

When I was done with recording I went to join the others at the bullring. After the intense concentration of the studio it wasn't really a change of scene; the bullfight was very intense, even though we were sitting high up in the cheap seats. What surprised me most was how it didn't seem totally exploitative; the bulls were obviously deadly, and it never really seemed like an unfair fight. In fact one of the matadors was caught by the bull in the upper thigh, inches away from his balls. After staggering away he returned to finish the fight, to general adoration from the crowd, who waved white handkerchiefs when he eventually killed his bull.

As a performer myself I recognised a lot of the process of the bullfight; a mixture of skill and showmanship, but with enough danger, or the possibility of something spontaneous happening, to be thrilling. The viscerality of watching death in that kind of environment is strange -- it's almost as casual as a football match, with men coming round selling crisps and beer, and the crowd shouting insults at bad picadors, but also there is the reality of the animal dying. Even though it seems normalised by the surroundings, when a bull takes five minutes to die, coughing blood from its mouth, you feel moved by it. I came away from the bullfight thinking, in general, that sometimes it's pretty arbitrary how you fight and how you die. Some of the bulls fell and died instantly. One bled for five minutes and had to be stabbed three times before it eventually collapsed and was killed. What was different? The skill of the matador, the spirit of the bull, the heat, the time of day, or just everything?

I feel when I am working on recordings that somehow I am trying to provide a balance to that kind of arbitrariness. Working so hard on every detail, re-doing things until they are perfect, is a way to stand up to the arbitrariness of much of experience; even home, work, money, pubs, what happens on a night out, who you meet, whether you get employed for an entry-level job. It often seems arbitrary who succeeds and who doesn't; but crafting something like a recording is a way to avoid being arbitrary and to make something definite, and, well, at least, if nothing else, there's that. Except for the fact that the instruments and microphones you use are limited by the studio you're in, and often, due to the constraints of affordability, the studio you're in is kind of arbitrary... I spose I'm working towards things in my work and my life being less arbitrary.

In the evening we went out to the "tourist" bit of Madrid. The area here where the studio is, which is also where we're staying, is more of a residential area. It was around 1am, and the tourist area seemed fairly busy to me, but apparently was quite quiet for that kind of time. Everyone was on holiday. Still, it was nice to go out for a few beers, and then come home and collapse and sleep a bit before another day in the studio.

Madrid Day 3

We're in Madrid recording this week at Mr. Soul studios in the Barrio de la Concepcion district. The studio has a lot of vintage gear from the 60s and 70s.

After waking up with a sore head from staying up all night drinking Mahous and tinto de veranos we made our way to the studio for another day of live tracking. We were extremely productive, nailing the take on the 4th time through, then cleaning up a few bits with overdubs. because it was still the morning and we'd already finished what we thought would take us a day, we did a live take of another unrecorded song.

After an extended Spanish lunch involving more tinto de veranos we came back to start overdubs. I recorded fingerpicking guitar on yesterday's live take, and we added harmonium, MS20 synth and Wurlitzer electric piano.

The Wurlitzer was run through a Memory Man delay into a Fender Twin Reverb, to thicken what is already a deep tremolo sound. A Wurlitzer electric piano is an incredible instrument. The tone of it sounds exactly like feeling emotions.

We ran the MS20 through some outboard delays and choruses to soften it and provide a gain boost. We used the delay, as well as cranking the frequency modulation and filters to generate some subtly apocalyptic noise.

Tomorrow, more guitars, more organ. Hopefully getting to grips with the Hammond. We need to wait until David's studio partner goes out though, because the Hammond can be heard in 4 dimensions from 5 streets away.

Madrid Day 2

We're in Madrid recording this week at Mr. Soul studios in the Barrio de la Concepcion district. The studio has a lot of vintage gear from the 60s and 70s.

Today was our first day tracking. We spent the morning selecting equipment, ending up with a mixture of 60s and 70s gear that sounds much fuller and richer than a lot of the stuff we can personally afford.

We set up so that we all played in the live room, but placed the amps around the studio for separation - bass amp in the vocal booth, guitar amps in a stairwell and a utility room, and drums behind a heavy door. There was very little bleed between any of the individual elements which allows us to cut or overdub later if we need to. And probably we will need to.

It was a long day. We started around 10am and finished about 9, and after around 3 o'clock we were doing solid live takes. We changed the key of the song halfway through, after I recorded a guide vocal; and then pushed through fatigue to get a useable take that would provide a solid base for overdubs and vocals. It was exhausting, and after a while it was hard to tell good takes from bad anymore; but being exhausted also sometimes tricks you into going into a kind of trance where the work flows naturally and it less about concentration and effort than instinct. With live recording you are constantly aiming to be somewhere between conscious effort and unconscious effortlessness; not too far to the former that you play like a robot, and not too far the other way that you are sloppy.

Afterwards, it was still just light enough for us to go for a beer with David, our producer / engineer / studio owner. It was very nice to sit down exhausted on a plastic chair at a plastic table on the street and order up beers and tapas from a small cafe. We walked home and bought a bottle of wine. Tomorrow we're back in the studio to do it again.

Madrid Day 1

We're in Madrid recording this week at Mr. Soul studios in the Barrio de la Concepcion district. The studio has a lot of vintage gear from the 60s and 70s.

We had an early start at Joe's house, where we'd slept on sofas and floors, and piled in to the back of Joe's mini. It was a bit too early, and we'd had a bit too little sleep, to be excited yet. Last night we'd practised til late and then spent the best part of an hour working out the best way to pack a crash cymbal in a hold bag. It was around 6am and there was a damp chill in the air that condensed on car windows.

After the usual tedious check-in queues at the airport we sat in the Wetherspoons in departures, in the section that turned out to be reserved for the West Ham youth squad, and had an early morning pint just for the hell of it. It was probably the first pint I've had before 8am in the morning when I haven't just been up all night. Good for the nerves too. I've never really gotten used to flying.

The flight was uncomfortable on Ryanair; I read Hemingway's 'The Dangerous Summer' to get me in the mood. Mainly it made me hungry. That man can certainly write about food. I drifted off for a while but couldn't really sleep with my legs crushed together. Looking down the aisle to the window, I could see Spain, black, sand and white, spread out below us.

We landed and walked into the dry heat of Madrid, lugging our baggage through the Metro to the Barrio de la Concepcion. After a quick lunch of Ham, salad, calamari and chips we headed to meet David, Joe's cousin, at the studio.

The amount of great vintage gear David has is incredible. He has Neumann 67 mics, a Nagra tape deck, a Studer 24 Track tape console, a Fender Rhodes, a Hammond Organ with Leslie speaker, several other vintage keyboards, untold vintage amps, guitars and basses, and drumkits, as well as a good amount of outboard gear for processing things on the way in and out. All the tools are there for some great recordings, and now we just have to use them in the right way.

We sat with David and talked about the Spanish music scene. He told us that there are a lot of good musicians in Spain but they tend not to get together and work on projects, rather they play as session guys or go as sidemen on pop tours. He did show us one of his friends, a musician called Diego Garcia, playing on Spanish TV, which pretty much finished off four sleepy guys:

We're gonna spend the evening watching The Simpsons in Spanish.

Airplay on BBC6 Music Introducing Mixtape

"Wanderers" was played on Tom Robinson's Introducing Mixtape show on 21st July. If you're quick, you can still listen and download the podcast here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/trintro

You can listen to Wanderers here:


- Zygmunt

Peter Hai - Blitzkrieg

Echo Pressure bassist Nathan Kerntiff, aka Peter Hai, has just released his new album "Blitzkrieg," a lyrical instrumental album featuring violin and woodwind drones, intricate fingerpicked guitar, growling bass synths and even me (Zygmunt) playing trombone.

Listen to it below:




Although cinematically wide in scope, the album retains a homespun intimacy and personality, achieved through honest recording techniques - buzzing strings, atonal brass waverings and the rasping of fiddles are all left in - building up a rustic, impressionistic soundscape, that, for me, evokes the desolate, war-torn European countryside that seems to be suggested by the title, a dreamscape of small lives snatched up in the darkness of huge events beyond their knowledge or power to change.

However there is also a timelessness to the music, which is perhaps partly down to the tasteful use of modern insturments to flesh out, rather than ornament, the music - synths are used as part of the fabric of a whole, working in harmony with the acoustic instruments, not as signifiers of the cutting-edge.

Anyway, since Nath joined the band we have had many discussions about the record and it's great to finally hear it in it's entirety. Give it a listen.

- Zygmunt

New Echo Pressure Website

After a few months I've finally gotten round to making a website for the band. Here you can find all the band's music, videos and shows, as well as news on this blog and, soon, a press section where you can read the lovely things people write about us. There is also a photo gallery with some shots of us doing various music related things.

So save www.echopressure.com to your bookmarks and check back for news and other things.

 - Zygmunt