The Echoes I Sent is nothing short of an immersive experience. It bridges ambient sounds with electronic soundscapes and rhythm, creating an album that simultaneously sounds both personal and expansive. The titular song, The Echoes I Sent, opens the album with lush, ambient synth. It’s not in a hurry: it evolves slowly, letting the rhythm flow in and out. It’s the kind of song that creeps up on you with its intensity, and only when you get more than halfway through it do you realise how far it’s built up. Asking for your patience, it delivers with an experience that’s thoroughly immersive, and the album then takes you on to Sometime Later, a track that’s filled with clarity and precision.
Twelve Stringed Thing shakes things up a bit – with shimmering string textures, the song brings in a warmth and intimacy to the otherwise generally cold electronica. It’s the perfect time in the album to pull back, and by placing the song here, Mental Health Consumer showcases their command and expertise over their art. False Front starts off similarly, taking things slow until about a minute in, when it explodes into an almost metal-like synth overlayed with the same blossoming textures you’ll be used to by now; Hopkins Hall, through masterful layering and production, creates an environment that invites you to live in it and experience it to its fullest.
In the middle of the album, you encounter Pads on the Walls – a song that seems insulated from the outside, swelling with well-placed silence and slow-burning textures that you can almost touch. It underscores what the album excels at doing: creating contrast, whether it’s the contrast between warmth and coldness or between meditativeness and explosion. Fight Fire starts off with high energy, sounding like it could score a boss fight in a video game, while Unexpected Storm is hypnotic, washing over you like the waves you expect from its name. It’s unpredictable and takes you on a journey that you can easily lose yourself in. As the album draws to a close, it goes into a zone of gentle, subtle sound: Dreamt Together and Insomnia Lullaby both do the work of feeling like a waking dream, and Fleeting Thoughts rounds it all up with a serene, almost prayerful sound. The Echoes I Sent is satisfying, contemplative, and richly layered with emotion, making for a listen that’ll become a second, and a third, and so on, in no time.