About

Featuring a carefully curated ensemble of collaborators—including Yasiin Bey, Greentea Peng, Sadie Walker, Liam Bailey, and more—Echo 45 Soundsystem doesn’t just reflect where Nightmares on Wax has been. While deeply rooted in his origins, sound system culture, and pirate radio, it boldly announces where he’s going. — (via Label)

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Despite radio’s decline in influence on chart positions and news consumption, it does need to be stressed that the death of the medium has been greatly exaggerated. While the big name national and regional stations continue to struggle, the cultural cache of internet radio has skyrocketed over the last decade; see the enormous popularity of London’s NTS, Bristol’s similar Noods Radio and US behemoth KEXP. In an age of omnipresent algorithmic oppression, it’s clear that music fans are seeking a less-aggressively personalised and discovery-driven alternative. 

It’s this mode of longer-form, curated musical consumption that Nightmares On Wax (real name: George Evelyn) is tapping into on his new mixtape Echo45 Sound System. The reggae/electronica veteran has long been a proponent of the merits of long-form music. His 1995 masterpiece Smoker’s Delight is a famously immersive work of singular listening; a work as subtly meditative as it is simply really fun to get lost in. Echo45 Sound System shares this absorbing quality, but also comes with its own brilliant central conceit. These 14 tracks are arranged like a pirate radio broadcast, with the option of either listening to each track separately or listening to them all as one continuous mix.

The continuous mix option is a pure delight. The tracks already flow into each other perfectly well, but you get the sense that this 42-minute mix is Evelyn’s preferred format. A bunch of very enjoyable ad-libs from some famous voices are interspersed between tracks, such as Gilles Peterson and Goldie. Every track here features a guest musician, so this use of communal voices feels wholly natural and adds another conceptual layer to the album; that of a sound system with various names hopping on the mic. Nightmares On Wax is one of the UK’s great electroni-dub practitioners and several tracks here feature bass weight of grin-inducing scale. ‘Starwood Bound’ is a spacious, moody stunner, while ‘Holding On’ layers dub and d‘n’b on top of one another with expert precision.

As if to further reward the patient listener, Echo45 Sound System actually gets better and better as its transmission progresses. A couple of early tracks lack a bit of seasoning, however, from the midpoint onwards, the album soars. ‘I Remember’ is an album highlight, featuring honest, reflective bars from Greentea Peng that are enormously engrossing. The string-fuelled ‘Wind Of Change’ is a slippery downtempo banger, while closer ‘Hop-to-Mystic’ is both the album’s most pure reggae track and its most heartfelt. By the time vocalist Liam Bailey closes the track and album declaring that we need to “stand together, stand strong,” you’ll want to remain locked-in to the exquisite, immersive and smoky-as-ever frequencies of Nightmares On Wax (and his many friends). — (via Clash)

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- Limited edition vinyl pressed in gold
- 2LP, 45RPM

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Label: Warp Records
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, 45 RPM, Album, Limited Edition, Gold
Released: 2025
Genre: Electronic, Reggae, Funk / Soul
Style: Downtempo

File under: Electronic // Downtempo
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