The ‘Click Click Drone’ mini-album: 22 minutes of retro electropop for the price of a city-centre pint was released on September 2nd 2022. DIGITAL ONLY via bandcamp
Echoes In Rows are Adam Leonard (words, top lines, vocals) & David Ansara (melodies, machines, additional vox on ‘Tsunami’). Songs written by Leonard/Ansara except ‘The Implausible Man’ written by Leonard.
We did a single launch show last Saturday (11th April) and it was the best gig we’ve ever done. Here’s a couple of performances from the gig including new song Handcuffed Man Shoots Himself:
“Back as promised with Adam Leonard, now midway through or thereabouts with the Octopus project which all things being well will see over the course of the next 8 months, 8 release and featuring 8 tracks all released on the 8th. The tracks feature an assortment of covers, live cuts (as with Fahey pastorally love note ‘my life’ featured here and culled from a rare CD-r set ‘to give up you have to bloody start’, rare audio from long since out of print stock and some rare unreleased gems prized from the Leonard archive. ‘Octopus part 4’ is the November selection which includes as its parting shot a sublime cover of Ultravox (mark 1)’s ‘just for a moment’ which we mentioned with much fondness elsewhere this missive. Taken from the ‘lucky seven’ soundtrack and to date previously unreleased ‘there is also tomorrow’ opens proceedings on this chapter, a sweet but teasingly brief glacial overture snow globed in a stately and stilled porcelain panoramic aspect. Staying with soundtracks – very loosely – dug out from that golden year of 2003 and prized from his ‘how music sounds’ set – ‘music for a slow motion film’ is adorned in the feint speckling of soft psych shimmers and ghostly arabesque swirls to craft out something that sounds not unlike a withdrawn and wounded Porcupine Tree happened upon in a late night studio rehearsal by Will Sergeant. In truth the best here and touched – one suspects – by Bowie / Eno’s immortal ‘Low’ there’s a chilling frostiness attaching to the previously unreleased ‘germans visit Frederic’ whose hollowing and edgy Mancini like sonic choreography had us much in mind of Gnac had he of course happened upon Bronnt in a dark shadow entry. Elsewhere ‘the ballad of Brian Aldiss’ wheezes, yawns and weirds to a fracturing Barrett-esque mindset that pays nods aplenty to both Hitchcock and Orridge. Hitchcock as in Robyn is readily recalled again on the curiously saloon bar soiree that is the mellowing ‘taking time’ while ‘the twinkling of an eye’ – again pulled that aforementioned ‘how music sounds’ set is ghosted in a becoming atmospheric velour that recalls the quite perfect Grails. Essential then”.
– Mark Barton, The Sunday Experience / God is in the TV / former editor of the legendary ‘Losing Today’.
I was planning a rarities & unreleased songs release, but when I looked through what I had I realised there was quite a lot of stuff floating around on tapes, CDs and MP3s that have never seen the light of day. So what I’m going to do instead is release 8 tracks every month for 8 months which (frantically pressing calculator buttons) gives you, dear listener, 64 tracks. And what’s more, it’s all gonna be free – initially anyway.
So, ‘Octopus’ – for that is the name I have decided upon – will be an audio retrospective of my recorded work over the last decade, under my own name, pseudonyms, side-projects and collaborations, bringing together music from sold-out limited edition releases, album outtakes, demos, live versions, soundtrack work, BBC sessions and cover versions. All eight releases feature previously unreleased material. Stylistically impossible to pin down ‘Octopus’ issues forth Ivor Cutler-style harmonium dirges, acoustic guitar/vocal visions, pulsing analogue electronics, laptop prog, spooky instrumentals, glassy-eyed drones, piano torch songs and more.
The Octopus Project will commence on the 8th day of the 8th month this year.
Being 11 in 1980, the first records I bought were by artists like The Human League, Depeche Mode, Jean Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk, Ultravox, Gary Numan and John Foxx. Electronic music was my first love. I like to think I was the only 11 year old who owned Fad Gadget records, and by the time I was a teenager I owned the entire Kraftwerk back catalogue, and even a few D.A.F. imports. My son is 13 now and owns no records at all. He doesn’t know what he’s missing.
Anyway, an album which made a deep impression on me at the time was John Foxx’s ‘Metamatic’. Recorded in 1979 after he left Ultravox and released in the spring of 1980, it stood and still stands alone as a monochrome electronic masterpiece. I’ve long wanted to make music in that vein, but never had the gear or the ability to do it. And then a man called David Ansara approached me to say he’d done a cover of one of my songs he’d heard online. It transpired he was a vintage analogue synthesizer geek, so I asked him “Could we do something which sounds like Metamatic … ?” and the answer was “Yes”. And here are some of the results. We’ve got an album’s worth of material written and recorded, but for now, here’s a 3-track EP.
Echoes In Rows: ‘Click Click Drone’
01 Zone Zone
02 Shoot Me Like A Scene
03 Brian Aldiss
It should be out on 25th Feb on limited numbered CD (80 copies), the first 19 of which come with a download code for a bonus track. I’m thinking of putting it on Bandcamp too, but I still have a bit of a mental block when it comes to downloads. Cost is £4, plus postage to your location (UK £1, Europe £1.50,Rest of world £2.00).
PayPal to adamleonard@hotmail.com please, or email if you don’t have PayPal and we’ll sort something out.
Here’s a little preview video wot I dun (sorry, I’ve been listening to too much Slade recently).
This is a new project I’m involved in with analogue synth genius David Ansara. We’ve called ourselves ‘Echoes In Rows’ after a line from the John Foxx song ‘Underpass’, because Foxx is the primary influence on what we are doing. Hopefully an album will come of this, but the first fruits of the project is the song ‘Brian Aldiss’.
Music critic Everett True (NME, Melody Maker, Plan B) had this to say:
“It’s pure, fully rounded-out, delightfully and un-regretfully, late 70s retro electronica (OMD, Gary Numan). Or, as Adam himself puts it, “2 males, one with a moustache and one with eyeliner. The Sparks template”. The song is called ‘Brian Aldiss’, after the sci-fi writer – and it’s very of its times. The late 70s. I hope I made that clear already. Most excellent stuff if totally retro.”
The Message Tapes 