Echo Earth

Long-dawning long-player by Pacific Northwest producer Hunter P. Thompson aka Akasha System spins a suite of remote outpost rhythms and old-growth electronics variously inspired by “days and nights spent in the forests,” “long stretches of back road trails,” and “sitting alone under moss-covered trees.” It’s club music for misty mornings, towering redwood canopies, and overcast skies above uninhabited terrain: Echo Earth. Recorded across the fall of 2018 at Thompson’s lava-lit Portland home studio, the album’s eight tracks trace cyclical arcs and seasonal tides, churning and yearning, meditative motion patterns flickering like holograms projected in the rain. Following key appearances on Elestial Sound, Neo Violence, and New Information, Echo Earth embodies all Akasha’s most evocative and elusive sonic strategies in a nuanced naturalist landscape of rust and radar, information and isolation, wires woven like roots beneath ferns.

Gentle but full of motion, the Portland, Oregon producer’s seemingly uncomplicated music brings the language of left-field ’90s dance to the great outdoors.

Portland resident Hunter P. Thompson has been producing crystalline, vaporwave-adjacent ambient and new age as Opaline since the early 2010s, as well as more beat-driven material as Akasha System, which he refers to as "eco-techno."

It might seem counterintuitive to make club music for home use, but it isn't half as weird as making club music for mornings spent meditativ...