Field recordings, vintage cassettes and the imperfections of analogue equipment form the foundations of Echoterrium, the new album from Wandour. Drawing on sounds collected during his travels, the producer combines environmental recordings, manipulated tape loops, breakbeats and live instrumentation to create a deeply personal exploration of sound and memory.
With more than 70% of the album’s material recorded outside the computer, it’s a record shaped as much by its physical processes as its compositions. We caught up with Wandour to discuss his unconventional recording methods, the appeal of analogue imperfections and why some sounds are worth preserving.
You travelled with a vintage field recorder while making Echoterrium. What were you actually listening for when you were out recording, and how often did a sound immediately suggest a piece of music versus sitting unused for months before finding its place?
I travel with bunch of gears like field recorders, cassette tapes and cameras, but over the time I have developed a habit of taking the camera out first. I usually spend days at one place, capture the visual side of it and listen before deciding what I want to record. Once I have found something that connects with me, I return the second day with the audio equipment. It is much easier than carrying everything at once, and it gives me time to understand what I am hearing.
For Echoterrium, I already had rough sketches and an idea of the feeling I wanted each track to carry. That gave the recording process some direction. I was listening for sounds that could bring those ideas into focus, rather than collecting everything and figuring it out later. There was still room for surprises, but most recordings had a purpose from the beginning. Even when I did not know exactly how I would use a sound, I usually knew which part of the album it might belong to.
Cassette loops are a major part of the album. How are you physically making and manipulating those loops, and what can you get from that process that you struggle to reproduce with a sampler or plug-in?
Alongside making field recordings, I spent a lot of time digging through old cassettes while travelling. I enjoy not knowing what I am going to find. Sometimes a short phrase or an unexpected sound gives me a starting point I would never have reached by opening a plug-in and trying to write something from scratch.
For example, for the track “Seaside Moments”, I combined a field recording from the beach in Sanya with material from old jazz cassettes I bought in Malaysia. One piano passage stood out, so I looped it and listened to how it sat against the waves. That combination gave me the first feeling of the track and became its foundation.
There is nothing wrong with using a sampler or plug-in. For me, the difference is in the experience of getting there. Finding a tape, listening through it, choosing a fragment and hearing it alongside something I recorded myself is part of the joy of making music. It feels tactile and rewarding, and that process influences what I choose to make.
There’s a lot of hiss, saturation, distortion and instability left in these tracks. How do you judge when those imperfections are adding something to the music and when they’re simply getting in the way?
I judge it by whether I can still enjoy the music without being distracted by the process. If the hiss or clicks become the first thing I notice every time, they are probably taking up too much space. That is usually when I stop adding more analogue texture and bring in cleaner digital layers to recover some clarity.
I do not want every element to sound worn or distorted. The contrast matters. A cleaner sound can help a rougher one stand out without making the whole track feel muddy.
Working with analogue equipment also lets me build that character into the sound from the beginning. Rather than spending hours trying to make a digital synth feel less digital, I can record through a machine that gives me the texture I am looking for and compose around the result. For the sound I wanted on this album, that often felt more direct.
How much of Echoterrium actually existed outside the computer? Were you repeatedly sending sounds out through tape decks and other hardware, or was it more of a hybrid process between analogue processing and working in the DAW?
I would estimate that more than 70% of the material existed outside the computer, recorded directly onto cassette. The DAW was mainly where I brought everything together for editing, arrangement and the final mix, so it was definitely a hybrid process.
Where possible, I tried to capture the sound I wanted at the recording stage. If the tone and texture already felt right coming from the equipment, I preferred to commit to that rather than leave every decision until later.
Some sounds went through the hardware again when they needed further shaping. I also ran the mix through outboard gear toward the end to help the different elements feel connected. The computer gave me the flexibility to organise everything, but a large part of the album’s character was already there before the sounds reached it.
Field recordings can easily become decorative, almost like background atmosphere. On tracks such as “Seaside Moments” and “Echoes of Rainfall”, how did you make them part of the composition itself rather than simply something layered over the music?
For both tracks, the field recording came first. I knew I wanted one to bring back the feeling of being beside the sea and the other to evoke rain, so I started by listening to those environments before building the music around them.
With the waves or rainfall playing underneath, I began looking for melodic loops, textures and rhythms that felt at home there. The atmosphere became the reference point for every decision. If a sound felt disconnected from that setting, I would rethink it, even if I liked it on its own.
That is what makes the recordings part of the composition for me. They are not an extra layer added to a finished piece. They establish the space the music is written in, and the rest of the track grows from that.
“Forest Spirits” brings together deep bass, breakbeats and a full string ensemble, which feels like quite an ambitious combination. How did you approach recording and mixing the strings so they belonged in the same world as the more processed electronic elements?
I was looking for the small differences in a live performance that I could not get in the same way from a string VST. A sample library can sound beautiful, but I wanted to hear musicians shaping a phrase together. One bow might dig in harder, a note might arrive slightly early, or the players might give the same passage slightly different emphasis. Those details gave me something to respond to as I built the track.
I recorded the strings through inexpensive vintage cassette equipment rather than keeping them completely clean. That added grain and softened their edges, which helped them sit alongside the forest recordings, breakbeats and deep bass.
I did not want the ensemble to feel like a polished orchestral layer dropped on top of an electronic track. I wanted it to be part of the same environment. Keeping the unpredictable details of the performance, then passing them through tape, helped bring those worlds together without losing what made the strings interesting in the first place.
You’ve talked about sound triggering memories of particular places and moments. Did you ever find that processing a field recording too heavily destroyed the thing that made it meaningful to you, or can changing a sound actually make it feel closer to the memory?
For the main environmental recording, I usually want to preserve its identity. If the sound of rain or the sea is what connects the track to a place, I do not want to process it so heavily that the connection disappears. That recognisable layer is important to me.
But I often take another version of the same recording and push it much further. In “Echoes of Rainfall,” I worked heavily processed rain into the string-like synth texture. In “Farewell Frequency,” the ship’s horn became part of the main synth sound. For “Midnight Flame,” I blended distorted fire crackle into the ambient violin texture.
That gives the recording two roles. You can hear the environment as something real, but parts of it also become woven into the music. Changing a sound does not always take it further from the memory. Sometimes it helps me express the feeling of being there, rather than only what the place sounded like.
Echoterrium is coming out on cassette and vinyl as well as digitally. Given how closely the album is tied to physical recording processes, were those formats important to the idea from the beginning, and did knowing it would exist on tape and vinyl affect any of the production, sequencing or mastering decisions?
Yes, physical formats were part of the idea from the beginning. So much of making Echoterrium involved handling tapes and working with recording equipment that I wanted listeners to have their own physical experience of the album, too.
I prepared two mixes and two masters to accommodate the different formats. For the versions intended for vinyl and cassette, I pulled back some of the added noise and imperfections. I did not want to push those textures as far as I had in the digital version, because I wanted to leave room for the character of the playback itself.
The track count, running time and sequence were also planned with the physical editions in mind. I wanted Side A and Side B to have their own shape, rather than treating the side break as an interruption. “Echoes of Rainfall” opens Side B, and it gives the album a slight reset, almost like stepping into a different atmosphere before continuing the journey.
There’s an interesting contradiction in making an album partly concerned with preserving fleeting sounds using formats that themselves degrade, wear and change over time. Do you like the idea that someone’s cassette or vinyl copy of Echoterrium might sound slightly different after they’ve lived with it for ten years?
Yes, I think that is part of the beauty of owning something physical. There is a relationship that develops when you take a record out, handle it, play it and put it away again. Looking after it becomes part of the listening experience.
Of course, I would want someone to take care of their copy, but I also like the idea that it could carry small traces of the years they have spent with it. Those marks become part of its history.
I think of it like a favourite pair of jeans or a well-worn Carhartt sweatshirt. The fading and wear are specific to the person who owns it. If someone still has their copy of Echoterrium ten years from now, I would be happy knowing it has lived alongside them, rather than simply stayed untouched on a shelf.
Wandour – Echoterrium is out now