Various - Escho 15 år: Burgers For My New Life Vinyl 2LP

Copenhagen based label Escho release Escho 15 år: Burgers For My New Life, an extensive compilation of exclusive material for their 15th anniversary (2005-2020). The compilation gathers music by all the currently active artists of Escho -- both Danish and international -- 27 artists in total. Across its releases, Escho's aesthetic has allowed for the amateurish and the obsessive, the soft and the hard. Escho is about the power of shared experimental experience. Escho was born in a period of time where alternative and underground music existed on a private, separate plane to mass culture, and it now finds itself in a time where mass culture and the underground are porous. Tribalism and niche knowledge has been blended by the internet, erasing the border between mainstream and underground modes. Alternative thinking takes many forms now, and new artists continue to expand and interpret the sound of Escho, carrying with them the same curiosity that lit the first Escho sparks 15 years ago. As a whole, this compilation -- it is important to note -- is jagged in form and tone. It is not even close to a conventional scene compilation, where the sound of a clan flows together. This record doesn't flow like that. And this, fittingly, makes this anniversary album a "classic" Escho release, because conventions about form and presentation are thrown out the window and new conventions proposed. More than its form and tone, however, this compilation is jagged because it is a document of today. It is not final, or conclusive in any way, because the contours of contemporary music are boundless. It's jagged because Escho has been to a million shows, and put on a million shows, and still loves going to shows. It is a picture of pluralism, discovery and openness. It makes a case for having ears, and making art, and propagating this so that successive generations of young people do it too.