Auckland’s Echomatica made one hell of a return with an anthem both aurally and emotionally. Their most recent single, “Love Isn’t Always (Radio Edit),” offers a straightforward, earnestly human rumination on love, loss, and the ephemeral nature of connection in a digital-first world.
The song, a re-worked take on their already heralded original single, “Love Isn’t Always,” sheds away the excess and gets to the core of what Echomatica do best, making music that is at once wholly immersive and instantly classic. Recorded at Earwig Studios in Auckland, the band embraced a recording approach that has become nearly extinct in today’s hyper-polished terrain. Recording everything live to analogue tape with nothing digitally added at all, Echomatica drips in that gives its radio edit more bite than most of what you’ll hear on today’s charts.
It happens to be more than a technical detail, it’s the song’s essential truth. Every breath, every modulation of tone, every slight touch of human frailty, becomes part of the emotional edifice. You hear the urgency of transitory love, the trepidation of farewell, and the spectral echo of moments that elude our grasp. It’s a song that doesn’t just address transiency, it enacts it, in sound.
What sets “Love Isn’t Always (Radio Edit)” apart is not just the purity of its sound, but the honesty of its lyrics. Echomatica doesn’t romanticize heartbreak, nor does it present it through glossy pop tropes. Instead, they depict love as it truly is, messy, fragile, and often more about what lingers in memory than what still exists in reality. That willingness to be a mirror on modern relationships, particularly in a swipe, screen age with an attention span to match, imbues the song with import and urgency.
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