Eccsame the Photon Band is the second full-length 1994 album by the Americanindie rockband, Lilys, originally released on the spinART label. The album saw the band move towards dream pop. The notoriously nomadic Kurt Heasley refers to this period of Lilys history as EPOCH I, also included is his first seven-inch single " February Fourteenth", the mini LP A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns and Lilys' first full-length album, In The Presence of Nothing. Eccsame the Photon Band was recorded at Mike Deming's Studio 45 in Hartford, Connecticut, largely as duo of Heasley and Harold Evans. Eccsame the Photon Band marks Kurt Heasley's Lilys shift to a slower, moodier, and more spaced-out sound. “I went closest to what my 23 year-old brain could stand with Eccsame— to the edge of my own mortality and sanity", Heasley says. “as far as the period, the energy, the zeitgeist of what we were intending, that was the only time we ever did it.” Robert Christgau described the band's sound as "amplified watercolors". While Lilys' musical style and approach shifts continually, the early recordings, including the stunning debut albumIn the Presence of Nothing and Eccsame the Photon Band, were strongly influenced by My Bloody Valentine. The first seven-inch single “February Fourteenth,” released on Slumberland in 1991, even gives direct tribute to their impact. It’s important to note that MBV’s own frontman Kevin Shields is a huge fan of Heasley’s work, and in his book on MBV's Loveless for Continuum’s 33 1/3 series, writer Mike McGonigal called Lilys “the only post-MBV ‘shoegaze’ band that mattered." "The obscurely titled, Eccsame the Photon Band, is the Lilys' detour into spartan dream-pop," describes AllMusic, "Kurt Heasley's soft, distanced voice is ideally suited to the coldly atmospheric textures of tracks like the languorous opener "High Writer at Home" and the narcotically catchy 'The Hermit Crab', the album is still one of the Lilys' best." Producer, Rich Costey helped to create the album's iconic textures. Interviewed on the history of Eccsame by Edward Charlton of Clicky Clicky Music, Costey explains: "The drum sound was a combination of several things: the hard, open space that the live room at Studio.45 presented...and also the minimal and incredibly powerful, tasteful playing of Harry Evans. Listening to it today, it seems a study in how a drummer should play to the sound presented to him or her, as opposed to the other way around." Out of print for over twenty years, a remastered vinyl version is being re-issued through Frontier Records. This 21st anniversary re-release includes original artwork and has an enhanced dynamic range with the reordering of songs. "The Hermit Crab" has been moved and now begins side two, allowing for a deeper cut of side one and therefore increased audio fidelity, creating a more exciting listening than previously available.
Critical reception
The album was described as "one of the Lilys' best" by Jason Ankeny, writing for Allmusic. It was described as "a hallucinatory revelation" by Marc Hogan of Pitchfork Media. Comparing it with the band's previous album, Douglas Wolk, writing for Trouser Press, called it "a much crazier record, and a much quieter one". Andrew Unterberger of Stylus Magazine stated that the album was "not influenced by shoegazing as a genre, but rather as a principle,", calling it "a masterpiece of mood, atmosphere and production." Andrea Moed of CMJ New Music Monthly stated that on the album Heasley "sounds like David Gilmour's slightly less evil twin, numb but not quite comfortable".
