Echo Beds “Buried Language” LP
In December of 2016, Denver, CO industrial act Echo Beds suddenly found themselves locked out of their rehearsal space. Their gear was being held hostage as city officials all over the country cracked down on unsanctioned artist collectives and the various DIY structures where many outsider creators lived and worked. This weighed heavily on the duo, who spent the next eight months experimenting and writing the material that would become Buried Language in their living rooms. Deprived of their usual tools, Echo Beds was forced to improvise using unfamiliar electronics and various cobbled together devices in order to flesh out these embryonic ideas. With the plight of their colleagues fresh in their minds, these new working conditions served to shape the industrial landscape of Buried Language, their second full-length album and first for The Flenser.
Formed in 2010, Echo Beds is comprised of Keith Curts and Tom Nelsen. The project began as a one-off live set played in a local warehouse and quickly grew from there. Sensing immediately that they’d only scratched the surface of their potential, the duo began experimenting with hand-built instruments and manufactured sounds—such as recordings of broken glass and a metal filing cabinet—in order to explore and interpret the sounds of industry as a sonic landscape. Over the years Echo Beds has made a name for themselves with their visceral and abrasive live shows that often include a modified oil drum as percussion. Buried Language should be viewed as a kind of exorcism steeped in metaphor and brimming with social commentary. The album title references widespread overnight evictions and boarded-up rehearsal spaces/ DIY venues across the country. It deals with a lack of transparency, and is the culmination of all the heartbreak, frustration, grief and rage and the cyclical nature of DIY space closures. Left to our own devices, we start over in a new underground.
