Behind the Scenes with The Midnight Echo on Their New Album ‘Voyager’
After taking a couple years off from writing music we decided to form a new project and begin working on new material. Without the luxury of a full band or a place to practice, it became obvious that we would have to alter our usual working style. We had written many songs in the past, but were looking to advance our sound to a new level. It was at this point that we decided to purchase our own recording equipment, so that we could begin tracking demos.
The first demo we recorded incidentally ended up being featured on the album, as a track called ‘Darkness Falls.’ The track ended up surpassing our expectations, and really hit on the new atmospheric sound that we were intending to create. The vibe of the album-to-come was very much based on this first track, and inspired us to continue working towards a full album.
The writing process became more efficient for us than it had been in the past, but did not come without its encumbrances. Being unfamiliar with the recording equipment and software made for slower progress in the initial stages, but over time we were able to become competent enough to get what we needed out of the recordings. Due to our student schedules (or lack thereof), we recorded almost the entire album in the dead of night. The hands-on approach allowed us to have complete control over every aspect of each track; something we feel is quite evident in the final versions of each song. Before we knew it, we had accumulated an album’s-worth of demos, but didn’t have a name for ourselves. We narrowed it down to a few candidates but ultimately The Midnight Echo was chosen, as we felt it best embodied both our sound and writing style, the album presents a heavily reverb-oriented tone, and traces its genesis to the late hours of evening into the early morning.
Next we were tasked with naming the album itself. We landed on ‘Voyager,’ conceptually based on the NASA exploratory missions of the 1970s. Aboard the Voyager II spacecraft is a Golden Record, which contains a soundtrack that generally represents humanity and our civilization as a whole. We found this an awesome concept, releasing a tangible, self-representative piece of work destined for an audience unknown, a concept distantly comparable to the release of an album in the world today. When deciding on the ordering of the track list, we knew that we wanted there to be an apparent directive that gave the album a sort of flow to it. When looking at our songs, we noticed that there was a wide range of emotions that were personified from different pieces. From this point, we chose to order the songs in a light-to-dark manner.
The bookends of the album, ‘Ultraviolet’ and ‘Infrared’ represent the ends of the human visual spectrum; everything that we can see and identify as the world around us is constrained within these parameters. We felt this was a really cool concept, and perfectly exemplified our perspective of the album, which by this time we had become absolutely consumed by. The naming of the song ‘Lux Permanent’ came about after stumbling on the Latin phrase, “transit” umbra, lux permanent,” roughly translating to “shadows pass, light remains.” This quote solidified the concept that we had adopted, and added an elegant dynamic that we hadn’t initially intended.
After compiling an album that we thought properly represented us, it was time to have them recorded by someone much more qualified than us. We turned to a friend from our hometown (Keegan Okazaki of Nocturnal Audio) of Brooklin, Ontario, Canada, who had been mixing and mastering for years and owned a home studio. It was during our time here that we were really able to hear the songs come to life. We recorded over a period of 6 months, travelling a few hundred kilometers each trip along North America’s busiest highway; the 401 (aka spawn of the devil). The months of effort and travel proved well worth it, as we were more than satisfied with the final product. It comes with great excitement that we announce the release of our debut album, ‘Voyager’, for May 18th, 2017 under Rock Avenue Records, USA. We can’t wait for the world to hear the material we worked so hard to produce this album and hope that everyone enjoy it!
Label Note:
It is with great honor and knowing that (The Midnight Echo has chosen (RARU) to release their album worldwide and they have been working with the label, hand and hand and listening to the advice to make this a great release. This hardworking band of awesome artists show great potential to overcome all odds to play around the world and grow to be the next big bad out of Canada!
LABEL CONTACT:
Mary Ann Hartman
Vice President and Media Director
Rock Avenue Records, USA
MH.RockAveRecords@gmail.com
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