We Be The Echo

We Be the Echo sounds like your favorite math rock tape played at high speed or like a seizure with perfect timing. Rather than set up a microphone for this instrumental band, the bassist prefers to talk through a megaphone lending a kind of carnival barker air to the proceedings. Despite the spastic tempos, there's no lack of head-noddable hooks. One warning to aspiring musicians: after seeing We Be the Echo, you may feel like going home and hanging yourself. - San Francisco Examiner

San Francisco and the Bay area in general has always produced huge contributions to the world of music. In the 1960-70�s it was The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Carlos Santana. The 1990�s bay area was a place for rave�s, electronic music, and celebrity status DJ�s. Recently we�ve gotten The Mars Volta, and I�m now picking We Be The Echo to join the ranks of the bay area�s finest export.

Ilk Koskelo is a physics professor by day, and the maniacal drummer of this trio at night. This shouldn�t come as a surprise when listening to the unique odd time signatures. The band is currently on tour supporting their new EP ALL-STAR DESTROYERS. Joining Koskelo is bassist Myke Stryker and guitarist Graeme Nicholls. They are all in different bands as well, and their influences are as different as can be. Reggae, folk, dub, punk, metal, and of course prog-rock. The audience who came out to The Cake Shop to catch a rare east coast performance was just as diverse.

I spoke with Koskelo before the gig and he told me that they formed this band for fun, in an effort to branch out and try to learn their way around each other�s favorite genres. What happened next was strange. Word of mouth about their energetic sets triggered more and more crowds at every show. They had no intentions of recording, but their fans were thirsty for more. They released the EP, and now are getting calls to play shows all over the country.

Their set started out thick and heavy. They play very loud, but not just for the sake of it. There is an urgency to go all out and match their intensity as I watched them from the back of the room. Before I knew it I had left my post holding up the back wall of The Cake Shop, and I was right in front of the stage to witness the assault. My ears hurt and I wished I had remembered my plugs, but I couldn�t forfeit my new spot. You might get hurt trying to keep up with these guys. They continued to raise stakes as their set built sonic momentum. By the end of the show, I looked around and made eye contact with other people in the crowd. People were screaming, but the shrieks were lost in the feedback as We Be The Echo politely bowed and walked off stage. I felt like I had just run a marathon and I walked out to get some air. I bumped into Koskelo again and asked where the name of his band came from. Without missing a beat, and with a dead serious face, he told me they were prowling a cemetery and a gravestone instructed the men to form a band and "sonically disembowel" their listeners. I believe him. - Grand Street News

"... music is even more enigmatic than their name might suggest. Fully instrumental and impressively technical, We Be the Echos first full-length, Stanislaw Stories, is a prime example of music as art and technique rather than flat out entertainment... this trio creates a thick blanket of sound that the majority of larger bands could not ever hope to achieve even with layers and layers of studio tracks...a great illustration of what three very talented musicians can come up with when not worrying about marketing or classifying their music...the kind of disc that makes musicians jealous and average listeners say, 'What the hell is this?'... - 30music.com