Echostar has been played over 10 times on NTS, first on 14 January 2021. Echostar's music has been featured on 14 episodes.

This is another project of Martha Schwendener, formerly of the lauded New York indie-electronic band Bowery Electric. The project debuted in 2003, with the release of Sola. Echostar creates a new space and sound for herself which is simultaneously lo-fi and hi-tech. Less break-beat driven than BE, "Sola" is a lush combination of breathy vocals, atmospheric sounds, and deep four-on-the-floor beats--an exercise in laptop soul that builds upon the soothing, spaced-out canvas of her previous band.

In the mid-to-late '90s Bowery Electric straddled the divide between electronic music and indie rock, mainly by leavening the former with dollops of My Bloody Valentine-flavored guitar. But with Echostar, Schwendener has left the rock elements entirely behind, trading them for the coolly melodic laptop techno associated with Cologne's Pluramon and Microstoria--although her affectless alto singing distinguishes her from that largely instrumental crowd. In Bowery Electric, that voice reinforced the aesthetic connection with the British shoegazer bands; but in the more purely electronic context of Echostar, it recalls the group Broadcast (minus the latter's more overt Stereolab similarities)…