The August 2025 release of first single Love Isn’t Always introduced Auckland four-piece Echomatica to an audience wider than those, fans of shoegaze and dream pop mostly, who had already discovered them through live performances. The band’s self-titled album debut followed within two months, a stylish analogue-recorded fusion of lush atmospheric synth pop, indie guitar rock and emotionally charged vocals. Richard Thorne caught up with the Auckland band’s core songwriting duo of Charlie Maclean and Alan Jackson.

It’s little surprise to find there’s a UK influence to the music presented on Echomatica’s debut album, but the lingering accents of guitarist/programmer Alan Jackson and singer Charlie (Charlotte) Maclean, clearly reveal that half of this Tāmaki Makaurau band were born and raised in Manchester.

Both have been living in Aotearoa for many years, and balanced with the NZ-born half of Matt Chong on guitar and bass player Scott Samson Echomatica is not any kind of tribute or longing-to-belong band, rather one that reflects the sum of its parts.

Alan and Scott first established a musical friendship playing together as a rhythm section, Alan (a drummer in those days) saying the pair dabbled in a few musical projects, but nothing memorable. Wanting to try something different they started putting a few songs together, Alan shifting to guitar as well as programming drums and keys. A second guitarist, Belinda Hitchman, became involved and at a point pre-Covid it was agreed they needed to add a vocalist.

“None of us three wanted to sing,” Alan explains. “I really felt we should be exploring having female vocals, so we ended up putting an ad on a local music site. We didn’t actually give too much away, so it was quite lucky that Charlie kind of thought, ‘Yeah, that sounds like me.’”

Living on Waiheke Island at the time, Charlie had just wound up an internationally-focused work role, and was in the process of making further life changes.

“I think it was that kind of Jupiter-rising moment or something, where I felt everything needed to change. ‘I’m gonna leave the island, and I’m gonna leave my relationship’ – and I just really kind of needed that music outlet. So I thought I’d see if anyone was out there looking for singers, and I think Alan had an ad online looking for like a ‘soft, ethereal, indie music singer’ or something. I’m like, ‘I could do that!’”

She admits being nervously under confident ahead of their trial, but aced the first challenge. Alan recalls it being The Cure’s Just Like Heaven, thinking that if she can sing that she can probably sing anything.

“It was just a nice timing really, we were ready to kind of explore a bit more and Charlie was there at the right time. We asked her to have a go at a few of our songs and just fell in love with what she was doing.”

Covid intervened not long after, meaning the band rehearsed together only when they could, with Matt Chong subsequently taking over the second guitarist role as commitment to this new band built. Their shared Manchester birthplace is quite coincidental, but Alan jokingly describes himself and Charlie as the post-industrial gloom end of Echomatica, with Scott and Matt being the Kiwi half – presumably the more upbeat pop/rock elements.

“I hadn’t realised until I came to live here and started to learn more about the music scene, how influential NZ music had been,” he confesses. “Actually a lot of it kind of felt like home musically, in a funny way, and discovering some of those Flying Nun bands that hadn’t reached us before was really quite inspiring. Looking back at some of those Dunedin acts I think they’re in our DNA as well, musically.”

With influences including Siouxsie & The Banshees and Joy Division cited, Charlie likens the band’s musical inspirations to a Venn diagram.

“I think we’re really lucky that there’s a real cross section of where our quite different experiences overlap, and we have quite a strong kind of shared vocabulary now.”

While a few of the album tracks have been around longer, most were written in the last couple of years, in the process of finding their shared sound, indie alternative rock that encompasses retro-futurist synth pop and dreamy shoegaze elements. Alan programmes the drums and synth sounds, and while the lyric writing is shared and detailing of the songs negotiated across the band, this pair are Echomatica’s songwriting core.

“It is quite a diverse record in the sense that it kind of shows a bit of a spectrum in our sound,” Alan says of their eponymous first album. “I think some of it is quite pop myself. There’s definitely music in there that I would say is more traditional, alternative indie rock. And again, I think that’s that kind of merging of styles, and about what kind of palette you put around a song. I suppose our natural space does tend towards more of a dream-poppy, ethereal side of things, but then we do have this other side, which is a little bit more full on. That’s a slightly darker, indie-tronica side, and probably where we all feel comfortable.”

Charlie, who describes bassist Scott as being the glue of the band, agrees.

“The album was mostly written in three sessions over the course of a year, and I guess it’s really just come down to choosing to record the stuff we like the best. Some of that’s been indie dream-pop, and I think with the first single being Comfort Me that’s maybe the label that’s stuck a little bit.

“I think Alan’s, very indie-based, and that’s kind of where we all sort of tend to overlap with the shared references. I’ve got a big love of jazz, blues and soul, and Matt’s never happier than when he gets a moment to just sort of rock out a little bit – before we have to rein him back in again! Anytime he can have at least four pedals on, he’s pretty happy!

“So, I think we’ve kind of really found where, you know, that Venn diagram overlaps, and that’s sort of become our sound. Sort of somewhere between M83 and The Cure.”

Their album was recorded by Darren McShane at his Earwig Studios in Beach Haven on Auckland’s North Shore. Aside from the connection of having shared gigs with McShane’s post-punk band Superturtle, Echomatica had decided on analogue recording for the reason of audio quality, Alan pointing to the weight of synth elements in the tracks and a retro feel to some of the songs.

“Basically it’s us playing live in the room, that’s how it was recorded. We wanted something that really sounded like what you hear when we play, and there are very few overdubs really. We thought analogue would be really cool, but yeah, it brings a bit of a discipline to the recording process that maybe we hadn’t fully thought through until we did it!”

Charlie laughs about that realisation.

“Yeah, we really went in there thinking we’d record like the backing, and then bring the bass in. And Darren basically said to us, ‘Just get in there and get it right.’ It was a really cool experience to go into the studio and actually have that pressure of getting it onto tape. I’ve come from more of a session singer background, and you know, would do vocals for people digitally and just do like eight takes, or whatever. My vocals were just used as a guide, and re-recorded separately, but musically it feels like we really recorded and documented what we played.”

The four all have professional careers and are approaching the development of Echomatica in phases, putting this record together among the first ambitions. Figuring how to get some radio exposure and grow their live audience numbers are among the challenges now lying ahead. Alan notes they’re also real music fanatics, so finding the right bands they each respect and connect with, to share gigs, is important.

“We really just want to do music we like and explore that, everything else is a bonus, to be honest. We’re just interested in growing the music in a way that feels good to us, and hopefully people will come along with us a little bit.”

The vinyl print run of their album is modest, and Charlie is equally moderate in her expectations.

“We’ve been really happy with how it’s gone, and I think that the album, first and foremost, was always for us. We like it, and we all get a vinyl copy of this album that we made together. And you know, if 146 other people want one, then that’s fantastic!”