World Of Echo has been one of London’s finest record shops since it opened on Columbia Road in 2018. Earlier this year, it left the flower market and chi-chi tat zone behind to move down the road to Cheshire Street, all the while putting out a series of fascinating releases, around 25 thus far, from the likes of O Yuki Conjugate, Movietone, Mosquitos, Tara Clerkin Trio and Läuten Der Seele. On Saturday, World Of Echo are holding an all-day gig at Walthamstow’s Trades Hall club to celebrate their birthday, with a bill featuring acts from the label along with “a few more that feel central to what WOE represents,” according to founder Stephen Pietrzykowski. The full line-up is Able Noise, Civilistjävel, Juho Toivonen, Memotone, Rat Henry, Salenta + Topu, Split Apex, Surface of the Earth, Tara Clerkin Trio, Thorn Wych and TRjj Compiler (you can listen to a playlist of music from the gig here). This wide casting of the net stems from WOE’s evangelising zeal. “Our intention from the beginning was to reflect and support music that wasn’t already well endorsed elsewhere in London, or perhaps even beyond,” says Pietrzykowski; “after seven years I’m comfortable in saying that it’s a highly ideological undertaking and that ideology is – if we think it’s good, that’s good enough. We’ve spent plenty of time working to the standards of someone else’s vision. Now we just do what we want.”
Given such a heterodox approach to selling and signing records, what unites the artists appearing? “It’s certainly not geography as we’ve got artists travelling in from Finland, The Netherlands, the US, New Zealand. There’s even a band from Leytonstone – think globally, act locally,” Pietrzykowski says. “Running the shop has been useful in showing us how deep and interconnected the international underground is. We’re all so atomised now and as the world feels increasingly divisive, it’s easy to miss acts of community and shared understandings. We’re not overtly trying to push that narrative, but it does feel good to be able to bring people together with a mutual interest in mind.”
He explains that Expected Music, the name of the all-day bash, is borrowed from the Tózé Ferreira album, Música de Baixa Fidelidade. “It’s a record you might favourably describe as iconoclastic but in truth is likely just fantastic piss-taking – experimental music is rarely celebrated for being funny, but these guys know what they’re doing,” he says. “I like the name because I too also enjoy piss-taking, but also because so much of the coverage of music now is patronising, pandering and anti-intellectual. Most people attending the event will be aware there’s little ‘expected’ about the music all of the artists performing make. And if they’re not, then they’ll either be in for a treat or supremely disappointed, depending on which way the wind blows for them.” You can find out which way the wind blows for you this Saturday, 8 November at the Walthamstow Trades Hall. Buy tickets here.
And finally, what keeps World Of Echo motivated in these tricky times for independent culture. Pietrzykowski is typically bullish when he says, “Being eventually proved right?” He adds, “The bar feels very low at the moment. That isn’t what a lot of people actually want or need. If we can help raise it a touch by not actively always taking the path of least resistance, then perhaps all the suffering and angst will have been worth it. If not, at least we did what we wanted instead of what was expected.”
