CREEP seemed to fade away before they really got started. The Brooklyn-based duo of Lauren Dillard and Lauren Flax showed promise with their 2010 single "Days", only to find their momentum diluted by a minor controversy and an affiliation with a fly-by-night genre. That song was a joint effort with Romy Madley Croft from the xx, who was the first in a string of collaborators to come on board with Dillard and Flax to help flesh out the band's sound. CREEP have surfaced intermittently over the last three years, often as remixers, but also with occasional advances on their own take on trip-hop. Some of the artists they helped remix come on board as collaborators here (Planningtorock, Alejandra Deheza of School of Seven Bells), on an oft-delayed album that plunges into the darkness and never looks back, pulling in a mix of old and new tracks on the way down.
If nothing else, Echoes is a timely release, coming at a point when artists such as Arca, FKA twigs, and DropxLife are developing a potent strain of 21st century trip-hop. Where those artists take the genre as a starting point, CREEP remain fully immersed in the sound, siphoning off some of its dingiest moments as a primal source. As such, Echoes is more Mezzanine than Blue Lines, recalling the point where Massive Attack sucked any remnants of optimism out of their sound. For a collection of tracks culled from such a long period of time, and with a different guest vocalist on each, it's a surprisingly coherent and linear album. "Days" doesn't sound out of place from (presumably) more recent recordings, such as the mournful "Vertigo", which features the welcome return of Lamb singer Lou Rhodes.
In among the shade there's a sense of drama forcing through the fog, with most tracks shaped by sparse arrangements and echo-y vocals. It has the unfortunate effect of making CREEP sound like they're trying too hard to make a bold statement with every turn they take, perpetually searching for a spine-chilling moment that's just beyond their reach. Mostly the execution is lacking—the beats on "Empty Church" are ghostly thin, the synths on "Jessica King" are set to the "plume of smoke" preset for the nth time, the Sia-featuring "Dim the Lights" rubs stodgy strings up against a too-predictable music box sound. The guest vocalists occasionally shine despite their surroundings. Tricky's turn on "Call Her" is particularly notable, reaching whispery Maxinquaye peaks while Deheza works up perfectly floaty harmonies behind him.
What binds the original trip-hop artists, who were reluctant (to say the least) to be grouped together under the banner, was a sense of people digging deep into introspection, often reaching a point that was uncomfortably personal. There was a grit to what they were doing, a sense of beats that had been labored over for months, of samples that had been endlessly tweaked through the night. Echoes, despite its long gestational period, resembles the work of a couple of "Twin Peaks" freaks playing trip-hop dress up, even going so far as to channel David Lynch collaborator Julee Cruise on "The Key". Their best moment is still the skittering "Days", but sticking a song from 2010 on an album from 2013 feels like the actions of a band who are coming up short of ideas on how to move forward.
