Show #154: Echolyn @ ProgDay '95

March 15th, 2008

This show has been available via the RSS feed for a while not but I’ve been lazy so there’s not been a post. Until now…

Hailing from Pennsylvania, echolyn were formed from the ashes of a cover band called Narcissus in the late 1980s. It was during the recording of their debut eponymous album that the band’s line-up was formed: Christopher Hyatt, Thomas Buzby, Brett Kull, Paul Ramsey, and Ray Weston.

echolyn was released in 1991 and followed up a year later with Suffocating the Bloom. It was this album that caught the ear of someone at Sony Music and the band was signed to Epic Records in 1993. With grunge and alternative rock in full swing, a progressive rock band being scooped up by a major label was the height of improbability. This led to a lot of speculation in the prog community about a full-blown prog rock revival. The same year also saw the return of Peter Nicholls to IQ and the release of Ever. Hopes were further bolstered in February 1994 when Marillion released Brave which saw the band returning to their neo-prog roots with a (gasp!) concept album. It was an exciting time to be a prog fan.

I recall well meeting a friend of mine outside the UW Credit Union at the now defunct University Square Mall during the summer of ‘93. He was a computer science major and had access to these things called “online bulletin boards” from which he culled the latest proggy news. It seems almost laughable now, but back then the major music magazines ignored prog almost completely so news came via Progression Magazine and fan club newsletters. The former came out quarterly while one received the latter on a fairly erratic schedule, basically whenever the fan-publisher had enough news and time to throw an issue together.

In March 1995, echolyn’s major label debut, As the World, was released and it was my first exposure to the band. I have a real soft spot for this album. My initial reaction was that their playing was incredibly tight and that they were the Gentle Giant of the 1990s. But don’t be fooled. There’s some great layered vocals and counterpoint ala GG, but echolyn sound very different. (They also bear little resemblance to the neo-prog of Marillion and IQ.) There’s plenty of verse-chorus-verse action and no lengthy epics on As the World but what could be standard rock songs are transformed with counterpoint and lots of syncopation into complex yet melodic nuggets of musical goodness.

(Both photos by André Bazinet

Unfortunately, Sony, didn’t like the album and refused to lend financial support to the band for their tour in support of it. echolyn were unceremoniously dropped from the label. They subsequently broke-up but reformed in 2000 and continue to write music and perform today.

The performance here took place on 3 September 1995 at ProgDay ‘95, a progressive rock festival. It’s a really nice show with great sound owing to the fact that the recording was assembled from three high quality soundboard sources.

Band lineup:

Brett Kull: guitars, vocals
Ray Weston: vocals
Paul Ramsey: drums
Chris Buzby: keyboards, vocals
Tom Hyatt: bass

Setlist:

A Suite for the Everyman (excerpt)
Uncle
My Dear Wormwood
21
One for the Show
A Little Nonsense
The Cheese Stands Alone
Suffocating the Bloom

Download show

Echolyn

I wasn’t able to find any live stuff on YouTube from 1995 but here’s a song from As the World performed on 23 Septebmer 2006 at the Lowell Brewery Exchange in Lowell, Mass. This is “The Cheese Stands Alone”.

Related posts:

1. New Echolyn Album Due
2. Echolyn in the Studio
3. ProgFest in Madtown?
4. Show #80: We Meet At Last
5. ProgDay Ticket Delay