As sound floods into the video for “Echo Space,” Zap Tura’s Andrew Jones drifts steadily into focus. Swirls of color melt past him as he hunches over his microphone, a stationary figure in a storm of synthetic voice and thundering percussion. It all seems to catch up to him mid-thought: “And we don’t know how to process / the speed at which God forgot us,” Jones sings, plaintive and foreboding. As the hues become warmer and the camera settles into perspective, we reach a moment of relative clarity - “but we still move on.” It’s a relevant platitude in a time of tension and uncertainty, and Zap Tura finds steady ground in its hopeful resilience.
The first single from his sophomore album, Adaptasia, “Echo Space” is a shifting, psychedelic maze of a song - laden with sonic booby traps, it changes course several times before combusting into full, technicolor hiss. Exploring the liminal margin between delicate beauty and sensory overload, the track flirts with shoegaze, dream pop, and trip hop, but lands firmly in a world of its own creation.
In its latter half, the visual reveals an embrace of community - as the flurry of neon intensifies, “Echo Space” finds itself at the crux of the Des Moines music scene. Appearing with Jones are director Phil Young, Adaptasia producer and member of local band Tires; Trey Reis, musician and founder of indie label Warm Gospel; and Huxley Maxwell, whose band Justice Fetish released their excellent, blistering debut earlier this year. When the dust settles and the music fades, “Echo Space” lives up to its title, a self-contained explosion of catharsis, color, and sound.
Zap Tura’s Adaptasia is out this fall.