The Echelon Effect - Reunion (2009)

The Quiet Man in the Corner

Hello friend. My name is Tim. I'll begin with just a small run down of how I got here. It started with New Age and Native American music.. along with Trance and some Hardcore. Then I began to get into other forms of club oriented Electronica and also Black Metal. Then after a long time of trial and error I became a fan of pretty much anything that was either atmospheric, or very rich in whatever their sound was. If I was on the search for Black Metal I wanted the darkest, if I was looking for Post Rock I wanted the most gorgeous, if I was looking for Modern Classical I wanted the most expressive.. and so on. I'll pretty much give anything a try at least once. But without further adieu, my first review!


The Echelon Effect - Reunion (2009) 



The Echelon Effect is an artist I happen to find on accident, thanks to YouTube. It is the name of a solo project started by the man David Walters in the UK. His sound can pretty much be described as a mix of Ambient and Post Rock with a good heap of gorgeousness. The tracks are so bright and sunny it's hard to be sad while listening. Some songs may be slower or more quiet than others, but there is no darkness to be found. He utilizes a good amount of instruments which really help keep everything interesting. My personal favorite are the bells. They bring so much optimism to the table it can single-handedly reverse any negativity you were harboring before turning on any of the tracks that feature them; namely

In this album you can go from what sounds like the usual Post Rock (Summing Velocities) to songs like which is like a huge wall of sound and is, in a word, humbling. It starts quiet and then builds and builds and builds. The whole album is an experience and may have made The Echelon Effect one of my absolute favorite artists. He fills a niche I've been trying to fill for awhile now. If you are into Post Rock, Ambient, or anything gorgeous at all, you owe it to yourself to check him out.

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