‘Echoes’ is the most recent record made and produced by Mike Porcel. It is also his finest. Critics and specialists agree that he is one of the most influential and creative contemporary Cuban musicians of his generation. The album is segmented into three fluid ‘Echoes’: Distant Echoes, Dispersed Echoes and Serene Echoes, each containing three themes.

These nine ‘Echoes’ tracks, like an impeccable film, can be seen as a unified shot of multi-photographic resonance. It is easy to appreciate the tremendous visual approach coming from the author’s inspiration. For instance, tracks like: ‘Fantasy over the Cuban tap dancing’, ‘Journey to a lost memory’ and ‘Wanderer Habanera’ evoke a fine combination of classical music, rock-fusion and afro-Cuban jazz, seen through a poetic rainbow of rhythms and tunes.

‘Déja vu’, ‘Visions’ and ‘Ars Poetica’ (the poetic side of this album) reflect how Mike’s searching arrangements have been melded beautifully with wonderfully structured musical outer orbit, sheer strength and musical intelligence.

‘Echoes’ has been composed sampling both, acoustic and electronic format, mixed with a classical style of suite. Maybe for this reason ‘Echoes’, also has been called by its author ‘A New Age Cuban Suite’.

Musically, it’s been written as a harmonic script-play in which the author’s own musical story, mixing love, memories, exile and the unhidden dilemma of the nostalgic Cuban landscape is told.

Mike Porcel says “It seems to me like a re-opening (reviewing) of my own visual and artistic concepts. It’s not casual or ‘vanguard’ music. I’m not the person to stick some kind of label on. It’s only music, in the way that I understand and enjoy doing it.

“Maybe, the most sincere echoes that I can give from the bottom of my musical feelings. But, I don’t know. I’m still in resonance with all of it. Let the sound coexist, bounding from one wall to the other. It means my ‘Echoes’, anyway. No other reason to play my music, freely.”

Contextually, ‘Echoes’ is reminiscent of the ‘avant-garde’ 70s rock and symphonic composers like Rick Wakeman, Keith Emerson, Mike Oldfield, Jean Michel Jarre, etc. Also, his intimate lyricism reminds us of the powerful images visualized in some lyrics of Cat Stevens, or even John Lennon, especially, in ‘Dance of the Poet’, the fourth track on the album. This is a self-portrait of someone who is expressing his simple everyday thoughts.

Finally, one of the most positive points achieved by this exhilarating project is to show that Cuban music is also something else other than the Buena Vista Social Club. This album has already been welcomed by fans, becoming a big success in New York and Miami. Pretty soon ‘Echoes’ will be on sale in all European music stores.


‘Fantasy over the Cuban tap dancing’
Music & Lyrics: Mike Porcel

Lend me the sigh of the Morning
And colours of the rainbow,
The flowers gracefully dancing
With the wind’s eternal tune
Lend me the pace of the river
Sliding down between the pebbles
A cooling breeze, a broken cloud,
To untie the chant of my soul.
Lend me the words of the poet
To find hope and soothe my sorrow,
The loyal heart of a friend
To face the road and warm my wings
Lend me the laugh of the children
Drifting in the Hands of Time
To go beyond that shining star
And reach the Music of Life.