Anechoic

anechoic "an-e-ko-ik" adj - Neither having nor producing echoes: sound absorbent: an anechoic chamber. Anechoic are four young men and a world of ideas. They formed a couple or three years ago, two childhood friends a university pal, and the recently enlisted Pete Saul on drums. Rob Leach: onstage you will see him playing a guitar, synth and singing. Tom Butler: onstage he will be playing a piano, bass, and singing. Andrew Lindsay: onstage you will find him playing guitar, synth, and singing.

"an-e-ko-ik" adj - Neither having nor producing echoes: sound absorbent: an anechoic chamber.

Anechoic are four young men and a world of ideas. They formed a couple or three years ago, two childhood friends a university pal, and the recently enlisted Pete Saul on drums. Rob Leach: onstage you will see him playing a guitar, synth and singing. Tom Butler: onstage he will be playing a piano, bass, and singing. Andrew Lindsay: onstage you will find him playing guitar, synth, and singing. Together they make detailed, expressive music, simple songs embellished by arrangements that demand your attention, that interest you more than usual,that surprise.

Rob, Tom, Andrew and Pete have all been in other bands before, dozens of bands, just like everyone else who's in a band right now. Metal bands, dance bands, indie bands. They view Anechoic as a chance for them not to be in a "[insert genre name of choice here]" band, it's an opportunity for them not to worry about rules, a chance for them to take ideas and songs in whatever direction they choose.

Two years of near-constant gigging, has galvanised and given direction to Anechoic; not just in terms of their attitude towards being in a band, but how they actually make music. Tom and Rob write the basis of their songs together, while Andrew constructs and deconstructs pieces of music on his laptop, before "whoever gets into the studio first" begins arrangements and recording ideas.

Songwriting has become integral to the band's make-up. Rather than simply "having fun with weird sounds", audience reaction is an invaluable lesson in what the band do best (as is "what me mam can whistle along too!" says Rob). That's not to say they're not still vibrantly eclectic - rather that their experimental urges have been given the weight of context, making the impact of a beat-driven, electronic climax all the more powerful, because of the unexpected tension and release of its juxtaposition within the confines of a fully-formed song.

For the first time too, their songs are about things; essentially the ups and downs of being in a band, of trying to make that band work with all your strength. And so one new song is a litany for all the crappy jobs they've had to endure in order to make ends meet, the worst ones being, of course, those related to the thing they love most - Andrew was dismayed by bureaucracy answering phones for a ticket agency, while Rob and Tom both worked in a well-known record shop where they encountered reams of assistant managers and "third key holders" who knew nothing about music and everything about belittling the people beneath them on the corporate ladder.

All this pettiness has affirmed in their minds that Anechoic is exactly the right thing to be doing with their lives, even if it does mean that normal life has been put on hold indefinitely.

They've been augmented recently by drummer, Pete Saul, whose talents are such, that Anechoic have been inspired to up their technical game, making them a leaner, more focused unit onstage than ever before. It's a bonus that he likes the same kind of comedy as Tom, Rob and Andrew (the Coogan, Morris and Boosh school of humour), and has a good haircut to boot (he spends more time in the mirror than Andrew but less than Rob - no one knows how much mirror-time Tom takes, because he does his hair in secret).

words - Nick Southall
with permission - Anechoic 06/12/06 - The Cockpit (Leeds)