7k! Germany Vinyl & CDs

Review: Brussels-based Echo Collective is an extended crew of classically trained musicians helmed by Neil Leiter and Margaret Hermant. While they've been active for some time and worked on countless projects, Plays Amnesiac - a re-imagining of Radiohead's 2001 album of the same name - marks their full-length debut. It's an undeniably impressive collection, with Thom Yorke and company's glitchy, heavily electronic original songs re-cast as neo-classical pieces rich in arresting clarinet and oboe lines, jazzy live drums, cut-glass violins and gentle orchestration. Occasionally projects like this can feel a bit gimmicky, but Plays Amnesiac simply oozes class from start to finish. There are no cheesy gimmicks here, just sublime, classical-jazz fusion cuts that dance from the speakers like the soundtrack of a film we've yet to see.

Review: Shackleton and Waclaw Zimpel's first album Primal Forms was a masterful collaboration which arrived on Cosmo Rhythmatic in 2020. The pair clearly found fruit in their crossover as they return for a second instalment, this time on 7K! and with an expanded approach thanks to the addition of Siddhartha Belmannu, a strikingly talented young singer in the field of Indian classical music. The over-arching intention of the artists was to make a joyous album about the wonder of life and living, but of course this isn't a one-dimensional happy-clappy record. Rather, it's a meditative exercise dealing in fascinating microtonality and mesmerising harmonic interplay with the power to have a profound, uncanny effect on the listener.