East meets West in musical beauty in ECHASL and her debut song, “I Know U Know”
By Kurt Beyers
“I Know U Know” is a wonderful listening experience simply for the rich, beautiful, agile voice of ECHASL, a young woman from China, and the music.
The track is at once a debut for her, a tease for the album, Little Black Sheep, and an intro to her wonderfully exotic mix of musical cultures and instruments.
“I Know U Know” is also a protest song.
“It’s against all types of discrimination, like sexism and racism. It’s based on a real historical story,” she said. The story is about the first Chinese woman recorded as having landed in the United states.
“But she was tricked, and she was sold to a circus in the United States, and, just like all the other animals, she was a show there. People would pay 10 cents for a ticket to see this yellow-skinned girl. This is the story that inspired me to write this song.”
ECHASL lists her genre — as much as it can be categorized in a genre — as alternative pop, but it is much more than that. “I Know U Know” is a good example.
The song begins with a gu qin (goo-CHIN), an ancient Chinese stringed instrument, leading into Western double bass and a drum beat straight out of pop.
From there, the music flows into melodies that mix Chinese and Western culture in a way that defies characterization except as a delight to the ears. It has pop, electronic and alternative.
And then there is ECHASL’s wide-ranging voice and the vocal acrobatics she performs. Only eight songs from the 11 that will be on the full album have been released so far in the United States, but on those eight she takes her voice from a low contralto to a soaring soprano, and that’s just for starters.
She can put a growl into it, turn into a sexy, sultry R&B, or power it into a solid rock vibe. She can make is hard and she can make it playful, soft and whispery or soulful.
You get the feeling that if she wanted to sing country, she could take it to Oklahoma.
The music, her unique fusion of cultures and genres, is on display in a wide variety of styles and sounds in the eight tracks released so far.
Lyrically, “I Know U Know” renders the thoughts and emotions of a young Chinese girl sold into a circus in ECHASL’s poetic phrasing and imagery.
Her sense of drama is on full display in the video, which also fuses cultures in the settings and costumes.
“The song is about racism, so, I want to wear my culture, and combine it with the Western culture, just saying that no matter what skin color we are, what we are wearing, how we’re looking, we’re one.”
The title, “I Know U Know,” comes out of this sensibility.
“The title means I know you guys all know that we are all the same,” she said.
She is majoring in songwriting and musical theater performance at the Berklee College of Music. Now in her last semester, she was delayed in both school and music career by the COVID pandemic. She first came to the United States for school at age 13.
She began her career as an artist three years ago and started releasing her music in 2024. Her artist name, pronounced e-CHAY-sle, is an acronym for Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining. She writes her lyrics and guides her producer into the sounds she wants.
“I Know U Know” is a good example here, too.
“I really love making impossible things work,” she said, talking about how a double bass ended up next to a gu qin in a Chinese melody.
“I told my producer I want these two together. I think there’s gonna be chemistry, and he said, ‘No. Nobody does that. Nobody has ever done that before. What are you thinking?’ But see? It works.”
And it does. Beautifully. Intriguingly.
On another song, “Butterfly on Fire,” she wanted bagpipes. She told her producer that.
“I tell him I have to have the sound on the song, and then he just played around with it and made it work.”
With “U Know,” she is beginning to promote herself in the global music marketplace. She loves making music and loves performing, which is obvious in the videos and in her music.
“Some of my songs,” she said, “can be pretty dramatic.”
Of her protest, she says, “I don’t expect it to change the world, but at least I do something. As an artist, music is what I can do, and it’s the only thing I can do. So, I’m using my language to say something and stand up and speak up for some people who have been silent.”
This song was the first she released, in January 2024, but she wrote it in the middle of the process of creating her album.
“When I finished the song, I thought, ‘Okay, this is what I want to do, mixing Western and Eastern culture together.’ I feel like this song represents me.”
Whether you have to travel east or west to meet get into the midst of her fusion, the trip is worth it.
Connect to ECHASL on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.
https://www.amazon.com/music/player/artists/B0D83ZW3DN/幸儿echasl
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/ollie-byrd/152187553
https://soundcloud.com/xingerechasl
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1yDLkPNKasn8fXh4NJjkeX
https://www.youtube.com/@olliebyrd
https://www.instagram.com/olliebyrd_owlpagoda/
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