Talking To: Echo World
Echo World is an independent record label and creative co-operative based in Bristol. They have hosted sell out events and are in the process of going worldwide with their music. As well as being featured on Noods Radio, 1020 radio, Cloud 9 Series & Keakie Music, the Operations Manager, Saul, and Marketing Director, Sara, are both renowned musicians in their own right.
Who is in Echo World and what are your roles?
Sara - Head of Marketing
Saul - Head of Operations
Tom - Head of Events
Sara is head of all visual marketing, content and creative direction. Sara uses the ideas and concepts from our meetings to create the end-product optics that get people's attention and keep them engaged with the brand.
Saul is the Head of Operations. Saul built the framework of the company, as well as establishing it's values and long-term goals. They help to schedule the team's work, hold the team accountable to deadlines, provide weekly briefings and design the messages for our campaigns; keeping the team focused on why we're doing what we do.
Tom is Head of Events; they help to build and maintain relationships with our regular clients and secure new venues or artists, as well as maintaining relationships with agents and managers. They also help with the practical framework of our decoration and audio equipment set-up for live events.
Tell us the story of Echo World, how did it all start?
Saul: Echo World started in a very strange way... my friend Will and I were having a coffee, talking about venues in the south-west. Mainly about how boring they all look inside. We weren't sure whether the lack of decoration was an attempt to please everyone, or if it was just to cut costs, but essentially it puts us off going out. We would pay £8 to go to an event and the organisers can't even put up a bit of fabric or something? It's just wasn’t interesting to us... The music too - 4x4 house, disco, funk or whatever – we get that other people like it but we don’t see the hype. We wanted to offer something visually stunning, interactive and more creative to combat the uniformity of events in the UK, so we started Echo!
Why did you choose the name Echo World?
Saul: The name 'Echo' came from two places - conceptually it was about echoing the online scene that we felt we a part of and creating something that represents it more directly, but also echoing what we thought that people really wanted - a type of event where the visual aspect was as good as the music. But it was also the name of our favourite audio effect, 'Echo'!
Are you all musicians yourself?
Sara: We are! When we're together at least one of us is working on a musical idea, or showing everyone a sample that we want to use, or playing one of Saul's keyboards. We're all really creative and are constantly talking about artistic ideas and concepts that inspire us.
What’s your favourite thing about running Echo World?
All: Without Echo World, it would be very hard to keep working at our jobs. We love the people we work with and are grateful for our opportunities, but we see working full-time for Echo as a collective end goal. That's part of Saul's role – they design our workflow over 3 or 6 months to make sure that one of us can go part-time, or can apply for 4 days a week etc after certain milestones and markers are passed. It's what we spend our evenings and weekends focusing on and what we'd happily stay up for days on end doing.
What’s the most important thing you’ve learnt setting up your own business?
Saul: I have a two-part answer to this, as it's something I've thought about a lot… firstly the most important thing is to be organised, but more specifically it's really micro-manage yourself. Not just getting up and writing yourself a list of tasks to do, which is a good basis, but actually splitting up the time in your day to make sure that you're using time effectively. You'll be surprised how much you can accomplish if you split your day up into 15 minute segments and write out a timeline.
The other bit is to be realistic. How much can you really do, how lazy are you being, how much do you really need to go out this weekend, or spend all day watching Netflix or playing video games. Those things are fun and we’re only human after all, but 6 hours of Netflix vs 6 hours of working on your dream? We don’t see a comparison. On a deeper level though, you're telling yourself that YOUR time to do what you want, your 1 thing you’ve been looking forward to spending your life doing all day / week, is watching a TV. That's your deepest desire outside of your job. It’s not true. You were born to have more purpose than just existing until Monday 9AM.
Did you face any challenges and how did you overcome them?
All: We're facing massive challenges almost every day! Might be the first message you read in the morning or the last minute cancellation from a client that unpins weeks of work. We've had headline DJ's cancel an hour before their set, have been outside radio stations ready to interview artists or a local business and the staff at the radio station haven’t turned up, and we've all fallen out because of the intensity of some deadlines. Initially you find it really embarrassing, or frustrating, or feel like it's the end of the business because it's all so intense in the moment. There are some tears sometimes too. But you learn this fantastic resilience and confidence from running a project like this that makes it all worthwhile.
What inspires you? (As business owners but also as musicians)
Sara: The endless creativity of the musicians who reach out to us. So many beatmakers pushing the boundaries in their sounds. They're sending songs to us thanking us for the opportunity to be put forward to our audience, if anything, it's a pleasure to be acknowledge by such talented individuals.
Saul: I’m always really inspired by people’s reaction to Echo World. People leave our events with a genuine excitement about what a live event can be like and I can’t think of any other night that does that for people.
What difference do you want to make in the music industry?
Saul: Even in it's recent rehashing with Spotify and 'independent artists', the music industry is still gross. It's always been a top-down male-dominated industry that relies on giants like Sony and Universal to form it's narrative. Coming into 2020 we have quite a lot female DJs and everyone has stopped doing press shots in warehouses wearing supreme hats, so at least we’ve grown a bit. But live venues, record shops and pockets of the artistic culture in the UK are still disappearing. We want to build a base, through a café, bar or shop, that people can come to write, to paint, to play their music etc and they know that they’re surrounded by people who share their values and that they can work with to affect change in their community. We can only do so much without everyone’s help, so if you’d like to make this happen, then head over to our Facebook page and see how you can get involved!
What are your plans for the future?
All: 2020 is such an exciting year for us! We're releasing our first compilation in the next few months, we've got tons of new events beginning and we’ll be starting events in France, Italy and the Czech Republic very soon. We’re also launching our site in the New Year and will have tons of opportunities for upcoming artists to get their music heard… Plus some very special announcements coming soon that you’ll only see on our Facebook page…
What are you listening to right now?
Saul: I'm still listening to Igor by Tyler, The Creator. That album is amazing! ‘Avalon Sutra’ by Harold Budd is one that’s constantly on my rotation as well. I'm also listening to a few artists from our Spotify playlist a lot, such as Seanbeats, and SiM.
Sara: Anything by Labyrinth Ear, Caroline Polachek's new song Door, Broken Flowrs by Danny L Harle and my own music hahahah. I'm a creative narcissist.
Tom: Up Early by Lord Apex in the evening, Nobody Knows by Pastor T.L. Barrett in the morning, and I've been listening to CYANIDE REMIX (ft. Koffee) by Daniel Caesar everyday since it was released.
What has been your funniest moment from running Echo World - specifically throwing events?
All: We’ve definitely had a few very drunk people at the events stick about until we're packing up, which is fantastic entertainment. We all spend way too much time looking at memes and chatting about absolute rubbish as well, so the high-concept memes and random Simpsons quotes keep us going on the late finishes!
What has been your best moment from running Echo World?
Saul: For me it's been building the team we have. I've always been massively inspired to push myself by my friends but it's really been a dream come true to work with some of them in Echo. I feel incredibly lucky as well that I get to spend my free time building something that, as a young musician, I wished I could have been a part of.
Sara: Just seeing artists I admire and respect want to be part of what we're building. I came into the brand trying hard to bring those in the community who I already resonated with to something new and seeing it actually happen has kind of blown my mind. It’s one of those times where you set out to achieve something you think is big and when you actually achieve it, you're kind of in disbelief that you've done it!
Tom: For me, the best moments are whenever we get to give new artists a platform to have their work appreciated. Whether it's through our submissions playlist on Spotify, or the ability to give musicians the opportunity to perform at events and open-mic nights, I love being able to support the community that we've a part of.