Echolalia: Green Vinyl LP

Pre-Order Item. Release Date Subject to Change.
Label: Full Time Hobby
Release Date: 28th February

Music City Nashville musicians go to desolate Isle of Wight to make a record; it sounds like a 'fish out of water' coming of age film where the ace players of Spencer Cullum, Jordan and Jason Lehnig, Eli Beaird and Juan Solorzano head to an old building where monks used to live to find inspiration. And they really do! The result is a transatlantic psychedelic folk record that's both cosy in a British pub, with a twang of country and an air of psychedelic jamming mystery where the monks took hold of their creative whims. 

here is something unique about Echolalia. Conjuring sonic magic in an ancient abbey off the English coast, this band of Nashville pros gathered far from the structures of Music City to create an alchemical haze of earthy audio adventures.

Grounded in friendship and a sense of freedom to follow sounds through whatever windswept fields they found themselves in, the result of the collaboration is Echolalia, due for release on February 28th via Full Time Hobby. Pastoral and psychedelic, cosy and progressive, Echolalia is comfortable in its own oddness and creative in ways both familiar and unexpected.

“It was Jordan Lehning that decided to put it together,” says songwriter and pedal steel wizard Spencer Cullum, who performs alongside the likes of country super star Miranda Lambert and ambient jazz auteur Rich Ruth. “I told Jordan about this studio in a really desolate area on the Isle of Wight that a friend of mine runs called Chale Abbey. It's a beautiful old building from 1160 where monks used to live. The studio owners completely renovated it. Jordan had this idea - the four songwriters would have three songs and we'd work together to make a record of it”.

With the addition of multi-instrumentalists Eli Beaird, Juan Solorzano and Lehning’s brother Jason behind the board, the group gathered in Chale Abbey Studios for a very un-Nashville experience: no charts, no headphones, no isolation. No preconceptions, no expectations, just friends enjoying one another's talents, responding with a sense of joy. No obligations to corporate radio or shareholder value, no amp modelling and quantization - just musicians making music.

“Destination records are my favourite records to make,” says multi-instrumentalist Jordan Lehning, whose collaborators include Rodney Crowell and Orville Peck. “You feel like you're the only person on planet Earth making a record when you're out in the middle of nowhere doing it. In Nashville you’ll go to lunch and run into 15 other people that are also making a record. Going out to the middle of nowhere, where the coast is a seven minute walk, and in the wintertime, it's cold and foggy and beautiful… there's really nothing like it”.

Drummer Dominic Billett and bass player Eli Beaird round out the band with a rhythm section as lyrical as it is propulsive. Juan Solorzano’s guitar and synth contributions add otherworldly textures, tethering songs to the firmament as they begin to drift beyond the veil. Jason Lehning’s engineering brings a clarity and focus that lets the room’s character be a part of the band.

The magic of Echolalia may be that the moons aligned to let busy friends with careers and kids and schedules and side hustles actually hang out in a way that adulthood rarely allows. In that special place populated by special people, the music was allowed to blossom in its own way, and now it makes its way into the world, unbidden by pretensions or preconceptions.