Sleeve notes
The Rapture
Echoes · 2003
The Rapture formed in the late 1990s, with members meeting in San Francisco before relocating to New York and connecting with James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy's fledgling DFA production outfit. The 2002 single "House of Jealous Lovers," produced by Murphy and Goldsworthy, fused post-punk guitar tension with a four-on-the-floor dance beat in a way that felt genuinely startling at the time and helped establish DFA's reputation before the label had released much else.
Echoes (2003), the album that followed, extended that fusion across a full record, adding saxophonist Gabriel Andruzzi's parts to Luke Jenner's tense vocals and guitar. The band's later records moved toward a more conventional, polished indie-pop sound, and a lineup change and extended hiatus followed before a partial reunion years later. Echoes remains the record most closely identified with the early-2000s dance-punk moment DFA did so much to shape. Vito Roccoforte and Matt Safer, the band's other founding members, remained its rhythmic backbone even as guitarists and additional players moved in and out of the lineup over the years that followed.
