Formula Indie Sessions _ Interview with Echoplay
What is your earliest memory connected to music?
Dennis: My parents have always been playing music in the house, so I grew up with a lot of music around me. It’s difficult to pinpoint an early memory in my life, but my father has been playing music from the Rolling Stones and he still is doing that to this day.
Nafsika: While my memory is not the best, I believe my earliest memory that had to do with music is linked with my parents; my father would sing in order to wake us up for school and my mother would sing in the car quite often, especially during trips.
How did your passion for creating music begin?
Dennis: I have been listening to music as a kid, but my true passion came when my friend convinced me to play bass guitar in his band. Around this time I was also starting my study in game design. During the study is when I started producing electronic music. At first it was mostly for having music in my school projects, but I have now been producing ever since 2010 or so.
Nafsika: I always liked listening to music and exploring/analyzing different genres and during my teenage years I started playing the guitar. That’s mainly when I started exploring songwriting by trying to mimic what I was listening at the time but most importantly, I believe that my passion specifically for creating music begun because of my guitar teacher who exposed me to different genres, emphasized improvisation and musical theory and that had a ripple effect in how I played but also in how I listened to music thereafter.
What’s the story behind your current music project?
Dennis: Nafsika and me started a band through this app called Vampr. We met outside of the app and started making music together. At first we had a post punk direction, but we rebranded the band to a more dream pop / alternative rock direction. Because it was difficult to tell people what our vision was, we released an ep with songs in the style we wanted to make. Instead of telling people, we can now show it to people. With this new music, came a new band. We are now planning to perform the music to audiences.
Nafsika: In the summer of 2020 I moved to The Netherlands to continue my studies. Of course, I wanted to continue making music and look for people to play with. The challenge was that I didn’t know anyone and there was a lockdown because of COVID-19. Then, through an app that’s made to connect artists, me and Dennis connected since we shared quite a lot in musical taste. After the lockdown was lifted, we were able to meet and jam and that’s when we decided to make a band and start looking for more members to join our band and in 2021-2022 we became Echoplay. This followed the release of singles, which show the progression of our sound and various live shows across The Netherlands before pausing live performances to focus on writing and recording our debut EP “Strange Ways”. We released the EP in August and currently, with a fresh lineup, we are back to performing live.
How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard your music before?
Dennis: I have been inspired by a lot of Indie Pop/Dream Pop artists. I love to create these textures of ethereal, dreamy sounds. Our sound is probably a combination of Dream Pop and a tad of Post-punk like Joy Division/New Order.
Nafsika: That’s always the toughest to answer. We mostly have a dreamy/atmospheric sound that is reflected by melodic lines from the guitar, synths and the warm vocal performance of Dennis. In general, we characterize ourselves as an indie rock/pop band with alternative elements.
What is one thing you’ve learned that completely changed the way you make music?
Dennis: I have spent a lot of time transcribing songs into midi files in this program called Guitar Pro. By doing this I learned a lot of how songs are structured and how professional songs are layered. If you really dig down deep, you can find some sounds you otherwise wouldn’t hear. Like a glockenspiel sounding instument in “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before” by the Smiths. These extra sounds can really add something to a song like adding a small contrast for your second Verse. Maybe you won’t hear it in the song, but if you take it away it feels like something is missing.
Nafsika: Rhythm is key. And that is not only the job of the “classical” rhythm-driving instruments (drums and bass) but also for guitar phrasing and vocal melodies, it plays a crucial role.
What tools, instruments, or software are essential in your creative process?
Dennis: I try to not overcomplicate my creative process while writing a song. I usually use the same drum plugin and a bass plugin while working on a draft song. Then I will add some draft vocals or keyboard over these. If I feel that I have something I want to finish, I will replace the drafts with something better. In my opinion, if the basics of a song are good, it doesn’t really matter what you play them on.
After the main writing process is done I do spend a lot of time tweaking the sound and adding extra layers. In the end I like to use hardware guitar pedals for some specific sounds I want to use. I use these mostly on the guitars and sometimes on synths/keyboard sounds.
Nafsika: Personally, I write most songs on the guitar. I do own a sound interface (Focusrite Scarlett) and Reaper to record my guitar.
Which indie artist or song are you loving right now?
Dennis: I’m currently listening to The Asteroids Galaxy Tour for the first time in years. Besides them I usually listen to Oasis and The Smiths.
Nafsika: Currently, I am loving Beach House (and especially their song “Pay No Mind”), amazing sound and vibe.
How have your personal experiences influenced your music and artistic vision?
I sometimes use music as a way to escape the things going on in normal life. It gives me some distraction and a way to express myself in an introspective way. Some of these sessions make it into a song that make it to a release, but many just become kinda like a small personal therapy session. Sometimes these ideas will make it to later songs when I feel I can finish what I’ve started a long time ago. It just needed some time.
Nafsika: They have definitely influenced my music majorly. They almost “unlocked” my ability to write music since I did struggle for a while to find “my voice”. Now, I believe I am on the right track since I can express my emotions through music but also form them into a song format. And for me, that is what music is all about.
What emotions or messages do you hope listeners take from your work?
Dennis: I hope that people can get something out of our music. What type of message that is can be filled in by the listener. Of course I have a meaning behind the songs that I’ve worked on, but I think it’s beautiful when someone finds a completely different meaning that I haven’t even thought about myself.
Nafsika: My hope is that people can start feeling more connected to each other, to their emotions and to the music they are listening to. Our songs typically deal with challenging situations, which unfortunately most people go through in life, and it would be nice if people can realize that they are not alone in this and maybe gain some courage to keep on going despite any difficulties.
What’s the most important lesson music has taught you so far?
Dennis: Music can bring people from different backgrounds together without saying a single word. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but how many words is a song or a video worth?
Nafsika: There is another form of communication that doesn’t require any spoken words and sometimes that is the only way to express certain things and have people understand them perfectly well.
What is a dream venue or festival you would love to perform at?
Dennis: It would be cool to perform at places I used to go to almost weekly to see my favorite artists from that time like the “Melkweg” in Amsterdam, but then from the side of the stage itself. In the end any gig with a crowd happy to see us is already a great experience.
Nafsika: I could name a lot of venues since it would naturally be amazing to perform at all the grand stages. However, for now I would like to perform in De Helling in Utrecht and Bad Tooth in Athens (just because I always enjoy my time in these places, even if they are much smaller).
If you could collaborate with any artist, past or present, who would it be and why?
Dennis: That’s a difficult question. I take a lot of inspiration from a lot of different people. It would be fun to work with Weird Al Yankovic or Stewart Copeland from the police. It would also be amazing to work with William Orbit because of his great productions. There is a lot to learn from him.
Nafsika: Too many in my mind. But if I had to choose one, I’d say Freddie Mercury. I think he was an extremely talented musician in all aspects, a real creative force and I would be very curious to just experience Freddie Mercury working on a song.
Where can our listeners follow and support your music? (Website,Spotify, IG, links)
We have our music at Bandcamp, Spotify, YouTube and all the other streaming platforms. You can also follow us on IG (@echoplayband). Here is our linktree with all of this information: https://linktr.ee/echoplayband
Looking toward the future, what’s your dream for the next chapter of your musical journey?
Dennis: Out current chapter is about people discovering us in a live setting. After we get more tracktion, we want to take it a step further and create more songs in a similar style, but this time with our new bandmates.
Nafsika: My dream would be to continue performing with the band and write more songs with our new members Julien, George and Yarmo, which I believe will take our sound even further.
What do you hope listeners will discover about you along the way?
Dennis: It would be great to have people follow our musical journey and looking forward to the next chapters in our band. I hope they can find out something about our personalities based on our music.
Nafsika: I hope people will discover that we love sharing our music with them, especially during live performances and that they too enjoy the music and atmosphere!
