Thoughts On One Year of Echo Locator

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The other day I went back to the mission statement I wrote for Echo Locator in the early fall of 2020. The newsletter has now been active for a year; it seemed like a good time to take stock. This became an exercise similar to one of my favorite yearly rituals as a critic: The “mea culpa” story devoted to records I’d completely missed, and records I didn’t fully “get” when I wrote about them. The piece underscored some dynamic things about music that critics often overlook: That our reactions change over time. That the first response can be flawed or incomplete. Or flatout wrong.

The EL mission statement included what became the elevator-pitch line: “Thoughts on nearly vanished sounds, spirits, ideas.”

Then I wrote a lament about the great shortcomings of the streaming services. Spotify and the others have this massive database of sounds, and do almost nothing to help users explore them – at least nothing editorial, nothing that provides listeners with little slivers of context and insight on similar or contemporaneous work, etc. I see this as a major failure in the architecture of streaming, and it’s related to the other big failure: The absence of easily accessible full credits for each track and album.

I wrote: “The streaming services offer access to endless music but are dropping the ball daily as advocates for music and its creators. Anything that doesn’t rise to the level of algorithmic attention is left to languish in the dusty stacks. Given the explosion of activity in the discovery and release of old and unreleased music, it is a form of criminal neglect. Echo Locator will attempt to offer a tourguide’s flashlight, to spotlight the creativity that Spotify et al do not regard as worthy of attention.”

That’s the orientation of EL, its reason for being. Scrolling through the posts, I’m heartened to see that many of them actually attempt to do this – they’re not just breathless celebrations or rants. Still, in the initial statement I voiced a few concerns about the subjects and the way I might handle them. Acknowledging that many of the artists I’d cover were little known or entirely unknown, I noted that it seemed important to avoid cratedigger snobbery; while I’d snag coverage candidates from DJs and writers and record snobs, it seemed crucial to not be too inside-baseball about it all. The subject mix needed to include archive work from well-known talents and compilations that might include household names. And the tone had to be accessible, aimed at sharing the kinetic energy of discovery.

How’s that working out? Answer cloudy! You tell me.

Another all-too-typical writer concern I had was about length. About a month into launching Echo Locator, I wrote this in my idea notebook: “Spare me the ten-page think pieces!” Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy reading and writing those, and am grateful there are so many incredibly smart ones at our fingertips. But a newsletter dedicated to vault discovery and gems that are hiding in plain sight seemed, to me, to require a breezier format. If the goal is to spread the word about unknown works that in some cases were overlooked for decades, it seems wise to cut directly to the chase and state, in jargon-free language, what’s infectious and great about them. This is a constant calibration; reading over the posts I see some as concise and respectful of the reader’s ever-more-precious time, like this piece spotlighting curiosities from the huge output of Lee “Scratch” Perry. Others, alas, are marred by ponderous critic-speak. Like so many creative endeavors, this is a work in progress. Feedback welcome.

Another large point from the mission statement: I wanted Echo Locator to be more than a series of “Look what I found this week!” essays. In this environment where criticism is in twilight, it seems important to explore beyond just great underloved recordings and look into what those recordings represent. And what they might teach us — about performance practices and skills that were demanded in earlier times and are now largely handled by computers in post-production. And what these older artifacts might say about the present state of music. (The post from earlier this week, The Jazz Ballad Wasn’t Made for These Times, is an example of this.)

I’ve been thinking in a fairly obsessive way about the many (many!) ways music has been impacted by digital technology, both in terms of production and consumption. Streaming is one example: It’s not merely a distribution method but a content funnel, a measure of popularity and reach, a platform built from the work of artists that somehow manages to avoid paying artists equitably. We said yes to streaming because we love the vast choice and the instantaneous convenience. Many of us did so without fully appreciating the tradeoffs – the way streaming renders creators anonymous, the way it encourages endless grazing rather than deep dives, the way it limits and in some cases mangles the discographical history, and so on. There are more of those pieces on the way.

I was surprised by one selfish-sounding line from the mission statement: “If this develops an audience, I’ll find out about – and then in turn share – lots of music that I’ve never encountered before.” I’m still working on the audience-development aspects – not my wheelhouse! So please, if you’ve been enriched by anything you’ve encountered here, spread the word, because inspiration is a circuit and it works best when people share what has lifted them up. Literally every week since this started, I’ve learned about artists and records that I would never have stumbled onto otherwise.  Mega thanks to everyone who sent along ideas, and please continue to share suggestions – cool finds and kitschy finds, anything and everything.

Onward! But not before sharing a few tracks from the endlessly amazing Ralph Stanley. Enjoy!

Thank you. Please send joys, concerns and feedback of all kinds to the suggestion box: echolocatormusic@gmail.com.