Album Notes

The story of this first Echo Helstrom recording: This record was recorded in the early hours of the morning at the Laurence Gallery in NW Portland OR in 2002 or 2003. It was recorded in around one week with mostly single takes and engineered by Tahlia Harrison. With little to no money but a fierce determination to make music, the band locked themselves in this Pearl District art gallery overnight after working long days at their day jobs. Although very proud of this recording, the band considers this to be more of a demo than an album, since time and resources were scarce and ideas were not able to be fleshed out as much as desired. One track that Ross is particularly proud of but can't perform due to its emotional intensity is "Floor 104". Special thanks to Tahlia Harrison for making this happen. It surely wouldn't exist without her hard work and belief in the band. This record, once it sells out (and it is down to less than 50 copies), will not be reprinted. It is only available for sale here on CD Baby and, once gone, will be a collectors item for Echo Helstrom aficionados. Here are some reviews of the album from back in the day: An Echo worth hearing again By Joseph Gallivan Issue date: 3/21/2003 The Tribune ----- Sometimes it seems like everyone in Portland is in a band - usually a quartet that dreams of playing the Paris Theater while churning out three-chord sludge in a damp basement. That's why the birth of Echo Helstrom is a blessing. In fact, until you hear this group, it's easy to think of its members as a bunch of soft-spoken music students. In the recording studio, singer-songwriter Ross Seligman listens closely as his violin player, Alessandra Dinu, lays down a track for the band's debut CD. Dinu plays the way her classical training has taught her to, with supreme control, producing a rich, lush sound. In a glass-fronted closet, Will Amend bows an upright bass. As the song "Floor 104" comes to an end, however, Dinu and the bassist's tunes descend into a two-minute outro of ugly chaos. It's a take. Seligman loves it. After the deluge of weak art produced in response to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Floor 104 is a joy, a beautiful, passionate piece that roots the listener to the spot. It's not really a Sept. 11 song, he's quick to point out: "It's a tribute to my stepbrother." Cantor Fitzgerald employee Laurence Polatsch, 32, did not escape the 104th floor of the World Trade Center in New York the day the twin towers fell. Seligman says the death of his fun-loving relative and friend left him feeling like a zombie for four months. Eventually, "Floor 104" emerged. "It wasn't for anyone else to hear," he says. "It was just to get it out and move on." Seligman's songs are poetic without lapsing into obscurity, which is partly the influence of such heroes as Neil Finn, Jeff Buckley and Bob Dylan. The band sounds like early REM but with more passion, or like Coldplay with an orchestra. On "Math of God," you can feel the emotion rising in Seligman. And on "I'm Changing," a foot-stomper "about being 25 in a crumbling world, petrified of my own government," this bunch sound like they have stadium anthem potential. For years Seligman played in other people's bands (such as local bossa nova outfit Blanket Music), too self-conscious to play or sing the dozens of songs that were piling up in his notebooks. He arrived in Portland from his native New Jersey to study music at Portland State University. On the way he lived in a tiny trailer in someone's driveway in Ireland's Aran Islands while studying Celtic music and jamming with heroes such as Donal Lunny. In 2002 he took the plunge and put together his dream rock band, with classically trained musicians who were willing to take his ideas and run with them. "I wanted a violin," he says, "but not like the Dave Matthews Band. I wanted it to be symphonic, beau