Steve Bates

Steve Bates says he took a lot of inspiration from punk and reggae for The Wrong Echo, but those genres are absent, musically. Rather, the album presents a collaborative series of aleatoric and improvisational moments roughly sewn into pixelated drone tapestries. The process for The Wrong Echo saw Bates create basic templates for pieces and then send those skeletons out to other musicians. Sound artist Christof Migone, singer-songwriter Christine Fellows, cellist Leanne Zacharias and Weakerthans drummer Jason Tait, and more, all interpreted or added to the templates, then sent them back to Bates, who reorganized, compiled and otherwise "completed" the collected material. With his collaborators contributing the mangled sounds of reel-to-reels and circuit-bent electronics, alongside classic instrumentation (i.e., double bass, piano), The Wrong Echo is thick with myriad layers of unique and varied timbres. However, Bates isn't very mindful towards gestures in his electro-acoustic compositions, content in using radio static and tape hiss to tie pieces together without addressing individual forms or highlighting connections. This makes The Wrong Echo more of a collage than an album and hurts its staying power.