Echoplex

Peter states that he heard electronic music first probably when born, in the hospital near Warsaw, Poland. Hearing the bleeps! the heartbeat, the pulse, all the machines freaking out when after a hard birth, doctors gave him 12 hours to live. Fortunately, luck was on his side, big heart pumped and allowed him to pull through. This big heart is still present till today via his music. As a young boy, living under the Iron curtain and repressive regime, was not easy to get hands on music imports, hence one of his first ever record was a polish one brought to him by his dad. It was “E≠mc2 ” by Marek Bilinski in 1984 on Polton records and Peter was 9 at that time. He became curious and intrigued by this computer game like music, which he also heard on his Atari 800XL, at elementary school, while watching science and biology programs in class and watching 2001: A Space Odyssey, Tron and Star Wars on VHS tapes. This was an absolute mind shock for young later to become Echoplex as he started to become passionate about vinyl, space movies, computers and technology in general. One of those important technological devices that cemented Peter’s wide music interests was radio. It played vital role in Peter’ s music knowledge gathering and development as he was heavily influenced by radio stations, which brought a variety of sounds from the outside and inside. Whilst attending Chopin’s music School in Warsaw, he started playing drums and performing in a Gregorian choir, which helped him gain some understanding of music theory, rhythm, melody and composition. Echoplex, left Poland around the time of the end of the Iron Curtain. The feeling of the Iron Curtain falling had brought in the sense of freedom for many, the techno rave scene was exploding, and Peter was about to be right in the middle of that cyclone for real. His next stop on the journey was Italy. While listening to local underground Radio of the likes of DJ Francesco Zappala, Fabrizio Cuchetti and attending the local rave events he was taken away by the Hip house, early Detroit techno and techno rave sound coming from Italy, the Benelux and Europe as a whole. Shortly after Peter took a residency in one of the rave venues near Rome to truly embrace this experience. Buying techno vinyl in Rome became a weekly habit and Peter was hooked. After 2 years he crossed the ocean and landed in Windsor (next to Detroit), and continued deeper explorations of techno sound, listening to radio WMXD - Electrifying Mojo in Detroit, discovering the Music Institute and attending to parties at the peak of Detroit Techno. He was already quite familiar with sounds coming from Detroit, Chicago, New York and even Windsor, via the Plus 8 – “From our Minds to yours” classic compilation that he already been djing with at his residency in Italy. Seeing the guys behind these releases play and perform was truly inspirational and Peter wanted to understand how to make his own music. Getting to that knowledge was not as easy as today ABC – click on me kind of access. It took years to figure it out. While living in Windsor, Peter experienced techno via many sources like radio, house parties, raves, clubs and even television. The New Dance show in Detroit and Electric Circus in Toronto Canada, soon became new exciting discoveries of the music which he started to spin around the country. After moving to West coast of Canada, he found himself in the middle of quite different style of music, San Francisco deep electronica and techno ambient coming from Vancouver by the likes of Adam Shaik, Off and Gone and many others really opened up new avenues of creativity, Peter soon became part of that scene and slowly but surely started to shape of what was to become his Echoplex signature sound while making his first sound experiments in a school studio of Electronic Music composition class at Port Moody High School. Techno started to be the main language to express Echoplex’s inner universe, spending more and more time at the school’s studio, learning by himself about analogue equipment, sequencing, sampling and processing of audio. Eventually, while his friends would party over the weekend, he would lock himself up in the school studio and record hours and hours of music onto cassette, multitrack recording, DAT and putting together first mixdowns of his live jams using a Roland JX8P synth with PG 800 programmer, which was his first ever synth tool at school. After building his own home studio, he worked on his live set up and started to perform even up to 6-hour live shows. First as DJ VC, Plasmik Muv, Blue Room, Les Autres Circuites and later as Echoplex. Soon he held residencies at Up Above, the World, Graceland and The Twilight Zone in Gas town Vancouver as well he was a frequent guest DJ at Home Base radio shows run on CITR radio by DJ Noah. Echoplex started to visit Europe, playing gigs and eventually after completing his sound design course in Canada, he returned to Poland in 1998. It was when, Echoplex sound took off, followed by string of releases on labels like Black Nation, Mechanism Industries, Cetron, Speaker Attack, Sonic Mind, End to End, LL, and appearances on compilations of Ritchie Hawtin, DJ Cajmere, Fumiya Tanaka and many others. Through projects, alter egos and collaborations, Peter licensed his music also to Nova Mute, M_nus, Kanzleramt, Missile, Torema, Technique, Solo Action, Abiotic, G-force, Hertz, Mosquito, Mutter, Semi-Automatic and Tresor. Finding a partner-in-crime in fellow techno upstart Damon Wild, Echoplex began releasing 12-inches on Wild's Synewave label, including under their joint side-project Niteworks. With an increasingly raised profile, the time was right in the early 2000s for Echoplex to initiate his own imprint, Soleil Records, kicking off with his own The World Energy EP and taking international tours in major European, Japanese, Australian and American clubs. After a special invite he performed Live at both Ostgut Ton Label showcase at the Glasgow’s art school and label showcases at Berghain. 30+ years later, Echoplex feels the time has come again to take next step. Now, as a professional and certified trainer, he transfers his skills and acquired knowledge to the next wave of techno artists around the world. He releases for key labels, remaining recognizable, shifting between the energy of the dancefloor and the warmth of analogue electronica. Echoplex is currently working on his next studio album, and planning to re-launch his label Soleil records. Over a background spread between countries as far-removed as Poland, Italy, Canada and now Scotland, with releases lined up on his own Soleil label and Live dates pencilled, 2022 looks to be an even busier year for Echoplex, where he hopes to branch out with both this and other projects into yet more unexplored techno territory.