All photos by Lindsay Melbourne
London is home to countless bands, but it’s also not the greatest place to form one. For a start, the expansive and smog-ridden stretch of land makes it both a financial and logistical nightmare to get all four members and their instruments together to practice each evening. Then there’s the rent hikes, the lack of affordable rehearsal space, and all the other chancers hoping to wrestle their way into your support slots and record deals. As a result, it’s no surprise that many of those ‘making it’ in today’s terms get their moment after a series of false starts and failed bands under different names (here’s looking at you: [redacted] and [redacted]). There’s an overwhelming demand for new acts, but an expectation that if you don’t take one opportunity, the whole thing spirals downwards.
An hour away from the Big Smoke, Brighton may not seem like the obvious answer to these problems. On the surface, rent prices and the cost of living are pretty much the same. Plus there’s also a hell of a lot more wind, which is always infuriating to deal with on a daily basis. But the difference between the two places is pretty simple: you can walk everywhere. Brighton residents have the sturdiest of calves; every band knows each other, because there’s only so many nights and venues they can all play; and, like London before one floppy-haired buffoon waltzed in and put a high-speed railway track through the city’s creative birthing pools, everything starts to coalesce around one focal point.
In a knackered but charming four-floor property by the coast, eight to ten musicians - depending on the time of year or who you ask - eat, sleep, write and record in each other’s company. Together, they make up four bands. Three members of The Magic Gang - the city’s brightest prospect and the subject of a label scrum - live here. Two members of thrashing post-punk group Abattoir Blues share the space, and their own George Boorman has a project of his own, Manuka Honeys. Daniel Taylor records as Sulky Boy, an appropriately-named project specialising in romantic hopelessness. New resident Daniel Moore isn’t officially in a band, but he’s already writing music. Like Warhol’s factory, Fat White Family’s The Queen’s Head, or that weed-scented property in Oxford where Foals calculated the circadian rhythms that would become their debut album, this house in Brighton has become the life force that beats within Brighton’s creative community. It is the coastal equivalent of those old artistic residences you’ve read about in a bygone history of London, where living in a creative hub but coming from a working class background were mutually exclusive.
You'll find similar set-ups all across the country, with DIY artists using shared houses as hubs for creativity - sort of like punk frat houses. This particular palatial seaside residence is called Echochamp, after The Magic Gang member Paeris Giles decided that the house needed a name. But it also doubles up as a “collective” that compresses everything that’s going on in the house and releases it in the form of records, which is sort of like if Rick Rubin started up a label called Shangri La purely to unleash the offerings from every session that’s taken place in his Malibu-based recording studio. “People were labelling it [the house] anyway, so we thought we might as well give it our own label,” claims George, whose “Pushing Pillows” track under the name Manuka Honey's was the label’s first official release, “It was our way of acknowledging a collective that was already there and happening.”
When Echochamp first opened its doors, each tenant had their own project. Together, they may share similarities: namely, a dreamy, lo-fi aesthetic. But the headrush of Posture’s “Bitter”, for example, is in a different world to Sulky Boy’s holiday romance postcard, “Balkan Baby”. “Everyone does things a bit differently”, says Kristian Smith, the Magic Gang member who also acts as Echochamp’s in-house producer, “Each band in this collective is doing something different, their approach stands out. It’s turned into more of a visionary thing.” Since those first releases, these hazy records have expanded to create one of Brighton’s must-see nights, where a sea of flailing limbs and cheap beer sneak their way in from the newsagents next door. It’s here that the members of Echochamp often hold the sort of depraved and destructive house parties that most people left behind in the parent-less weekends of Sixth Form.
Usually, it all starts after one of the bands decides to play an impromptu gig in one of their bedrooms. Then crowd-surfers’ flailing limbs smash lightbulbs, safety deposits are horrifically compromised, and an unhealthy amount of carpet is stained with red wine, which steepens into its weakening fabric like blood clots. At one point, the ceiling in one of the rooms fell in. “That’s put us off doing a show, slightly,” admits George, sheepishly. Although house parties take place with some regularity at the Echochamp palace, the most traditional is the annual one that happens halfway through Brighton’s annual buzzathon, The Great Escape.
When the festival’s music peters out, the real fun begins. To be fair to the band, they’ve come prepared - valuables are safely stored away, smoke alarms aren’t triggered, rugs are placed below doorframes. The neighbours have even been given fair warning. It all seems fairly safe. But that also doesn’t stop the night from being a complete shambles. A random guy spends half his night stuck in the shower. Someone thinks it’s a good idea to distribute “shots” of bleach. Barely anyone staggers up to leave until at least 7AM. It’s a celebration of sorts - only for the hosts, they’re faced with the prospect of playing a gig the next day.
A month on from the party, House Echochamp are sitting round chain-smoking and sipping on instant coffee, reflecting on how exactly they got here. Together they first shared this “darker, dingier” place down the road, in the company of Eminem-loving thugs. Today the situation’s a lot rosier. It’s not a paradise, and the house often ends up “rammed” with strangers because the place is so central, but this localised meeting of minds is what they’ve been looking for since most of the Echochamp residence finished studying at Brighton University. “These are the people I’d be around anyway, even if we weren’t in bands,” says Kristian. “If one of us wanted to stay and do music while everyone else went back home and got proper jobs, that would suck,” claims Daniel Taylor.
On paper, the idealised image of Echochamp’s palatial grounds is one of musical nirvana. But it also comes at a price. No one wakes up, writes a song, and has nothing to worry about the next day. In fact, it’s almost like the members live a double life. In each room, there are trinkets taken from the music world - old gig posts, band memorabilia and vinyl collections. But there’s also a reminder that to survive as a DIY band in 2016 - to live in a creative environment where music is always around - it’s become a necessity to take on another full-time job. Daniel Taylor and Harry Waugh (of Abattoir Blues) turn up to office jobs every day. George pulls pints at a nearby pub. Others have had stints working in a school for young adults with learning difficulties. Deliveroo bags are slumped next to laptops. It’s a very different world to that of the band member who works as a record store clerk or gig promoter. Instead, the Echochamp world is one that relies both on bureaucracy and the rise of sharing culture.
As a result, the house isn’t always a permanent party spot, with beer cans stacked on amps and scattered DVD cases littering the surface of the kitchen table, dusted with the eternal ceremony of some white powder. Everyone has their own household duties. But that’s part and parcel of being in a band, and trying to do so without the privilege of a trust-fund or safety net, which is becoming a rarity in today’s music scenes. Their current situation is “fucking ridiculous,” claims Jack, who used to count the clock in a call centre and now works for a charity. “The rent we pay - it makes me feel sick every day.”
“It’s really tough, because it is such a lovely place,” pipes Harry, discussing the necessary part-time jobs and rent payments to live in their creative home. “But there’s no doubt that [living in the Echochamp house] helps creativity in some way”.
“London’s never really appealed to me,” continues George. “And I think we all feel the same about that… If it was just us in this house, it would be very insular. But we’ve got mates who are in other bands. There’s a community here. Our mates in other bands are living a few doors down.” Jack claims that London bands lose a sense of “hometown glory”. Alluding to the scattered nature of band members and long trips to rehearse in the capital, he says “You’re living in a massive city. You can’t really be ‘a London band’. There’s a bit more of a community or scene down here.”
It’s that sense of community that means Brighton’s creative spaces can’t be reduced to just one place. The city’s best garage rock bands have all played Late Night Lingerie nights. Bringing a similar crowd, Georgina Statt’s Fat Dog parties combine bands with film screenings and DIY zines. The loudest of the bunch, Demob Happy have their own cafe-cum-rehearsal space, Nowhere Man. It’s a cheaper space to help foster a community, and it also serves great coffee. Everyone’s a winner.
There’s a sense that out of circumstance - not fancying a London move, preferring to create something closer to home - these nights and spaces have popped up in unison. And none of this belongs to one distinct sound - this isn’t reduced to guitar bands, by any stretch. In House Echochamp, everyone’s been the subject of label attention and tempting record deals, but they’ve stuck to what they know, creating music in a place where not too many people are listening in. Paeris admits the movement can feel “insular” and that “it’s difficult to judge a band’s level of success,” but right now that isn’t especially important.
For now, the only ‘place’ that matters is here. As they wander from the living room to the outside, perching on the front steps, they have some news. “We’ve said yes to another year,” beams Daniel. Even if one tenant changes their mind and decides to move on, there’s a queue round the block of budding musicians who’d love to live here. The grim temp jobs won’t go away anytime soon, but there’s enough going on here to justify another twelve months at the very least.
“The environment’s creatively nurturing,” says Kristian. “Being shut off from London is good. In the early stages, people’s opinion of your work isn’t as important as it might be further down the line. So it’s really good that you can get it down in a space, where you’re around other artists who can help you and chip in. And after that, you can present it to the outer world.”
You can find Jamie Milton on Twitter.
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