Echo Machine – Instant Transmissions

The end for The Mirror Trap after nine years may have seemed a great loss to the Scottish music scene, but such musical mourning was short-lived. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, only shrowded in sparkling glitter, UV paint and about as many neon strip-lights as the human frame can physically carry, Echo Machine are the emerging synth-pop resurrection party this dying Earth so desperately needs to dance to.

Time previously spent in The Mirror Trap is conspicuous on Instant Transmissions, their undeniable industry experience audible in both their ambitious writing and purified, clean production. They're also able to bypass the awkward ‘finding our sound’ first album, instead, unapologetically unleashing all kinds of mayhem across a confidently chaotic 11 tracks, establishing a New Romantic-meets-80s pop-alt-rock-collision crash to a standard that even the best genre-mashers would be proud of.

It’s a record for the modern-day – a conscious, frustrated, wriggling entity that questions and riots at the state of its own existence. What distinguishes me from every other fucker out there? How can I be more? Screaming ‘I’m everyone you’ve ever known’ into the void before ultimately resigning and agreeing to just go a bit mental on a night out instead. Gary Moore’s lyricism is scarily relatable but rarely morbid, carried by the sonic energy of fizz and fuzz in an amalgamation of catharsis and rage.

Instant Transmissions is an explosion of sound, a rebirth and a guidebook to the bedlam of contemporary life all rolled into one.

Listen to: Chameleon, Automatic Love, The Road