Dreamy, epic, breathtaking and ethereal. Those are all ways to describe the music of Warsaw, Poland based band Echoteka. The band blends elements of post rock, 90’s alternative and shoegaze on their self titled debut album which you can check out here.
I sat down with Arkadiusz Pudełko from the band to talk about their early musical influences, how they started making music and the making of the groups self titled debut album.
CMM – What was the first music that really made an impact on you all as kids and what artists or bands did you enjoy the most?
Arkadiusz – It’s hard to clearly define, because each of us listened to and liked very different things, but what we had in common was an interest in rock music. Over time, we all became interested in its other subgenres like progressive rock and post rock. Each of us has been influenced a lot by bands such as Black Sabbath, Radiohead, GY!BE, Pink Floyd, The Cure, but of course there’s a lot more.
CMM – When did you all first start playing music and writing your own songs?
Arkadiusz – Most of us started playing music quite early – in late elementary school, and created first bands and songs in middle school. As for the band, some of us played together in another band nine years ago. Years later, with a slightly changed lineup, we have been playing since 2023.
CMM – The band recently released your self titled debut album. What was the writing and recording process for those songs like? Any particular gear and instruments you used during the recording sessions that helped inspire you?
Arkadiusz – As we have been playing together years ago, the songs, or demos from that period have remained, hence some of the old material is on our debut album in heavily rearranged versions. Some of the songs are completely new.
The creative process for each song looked similar and very typical – we started from making a demo of a song or just a basic idea and worked on it together during rehearsals.
We produced the album ourselves with fairly simple tools – we recorded the drums and vocals in our rehearsal room, and all the rest in the room of one of us – the guitars were recorded through HX Stomp simulations, because we think that without a lot of money, you can crank out a very satisfactory sound. For the electronic parts, we used Ableton, and the instruments were pretty much precision bass, Fender Stratocaster and Squier Jazzmaster.
CMM- If the band could do a score for any film director who would it be and what would the film be about?
Arkadiusz – If we had the opportunity, we would definitely want to create a soundtrack for a David Lynch film. Since it would be his film, we have absolutely no clue what brilliant thing he would come up with, but music played a very big role in his films, so we are sure we would have a lot of room for creativity.
CMM – What do you have coming up next? Any new recordings or shows?
Arkadiusz – As for our immediate plans, next week we are recording a live session, which will include a few songs from our debut album. We are sincerely looking forward to it, to release some of our material in live video form. In addition to that, of course, we plan to play a lot of concerts and we also want to do a small tour of Poland.
Further plans include releasing a physical version of the album, and working on new songs. Once we have created some of the new material, we will definitely release a single.
