Unday records news - With Geike Arnaert, Aäron Koch finds the missing voice on 'Echoes'

Aäron Koch has never had much of a soft spot for duets. 'Echoes', it turns out, had other ideas.

The song has been following him around for years. An early demo never quite settled into place, and when Koch was working on his debut album 'For Once', he dismantled the original arrangement and rebuilt it as 'Longing'. It took returning to that first recording years later for another possibility to reveal itself. Perhaps the song hadn't needed to be rearranged at all. Perhaps it had simply been missing another voice.

Koch found it in Geike Arnaert. He had known Geike for some time and had long admired the particular tension in her singing: a voice that can sound exposed and fragile one moment, then quietly commanding the next. When he sent her the old demo, her answer came back almost immediately: "I'm in."

'Echoes' stays close to that original, shadowy atmosphere. It moves patiently, leaving plenty of air around both singers while a quiet unease simmers underneath. Rather than trading lines in the manner of a conventional duet, Koch and Geike circle around each other. Their voices meet, separate and blur at the edges, giving a song about longing and connection its elusive pull.

'Echoes' is out now Album - Echoes - YouTube