Entertainment
obsessed: io echo
The coolest rider request ever, plus more from our NYLON Music Tour band.
It's a big summer for L.A.'s IO Echo; not only is it their first time on the festival circuit, but they're also in the midst of opening for CSS on the NYLON Music Tour. "It's a lot of fun," is how frontwoman Ioanna Gika describes the trip across North America thus far. "CSS are really fun to tour with--they're down-to-earth fun people!"
We chatted with Gika and bandmate Leo Ross to find out what else they've been loving. Get ready for ultimate summer reads and the craziest rider request ever.
"I like 'Sa Mo Jung,' that's a really good song. I find new music through friends, just general exploration of things. But word-of-mouth is a really good way." --Ioanna Gika
"It's a photo mangling app. We used it to create all of our album artwork and a lot of our flyers. We do all of the artwork that's associated with the band ourselves, and that app is really awesome, you can take photos and be really extreme and weird and distort photos to create cool colors. I can only liken it to guitar peddles. Also, when we're on the road it's a good time killer." --Leo Ross
Human Rights
"I'm obsessed with the topic and advocacy of human rights. I was born in Washington, D.C., and my family lived in Southeast Asia, Australia, and Greece, so I don't know if it's from living in all these places in the world or because [one of] my grandfathers represented the US at the Geneva Summit For Human Rights, but it's always been something I've been passionate about; the universal belief that all humans are equal and should be treated equally. All genders, ethnic backgrounds, sexualities. There are different ways to volunteer--the United Nations outreach programs are good. I've also just been reading an initiative called 'From Rights To Remedies,' it's a good proposal that talks about how there needs to be stronger synergy amongst national authorities." --Ioanna Gika
Jacaranda Trees
"I'm obsessed with Jacaranda trees--those purple treas that come out in late spring, they're floral trees." --Ioanna Gika
Andy Denzler "The color palette that he uses is really amazing. It's fine oil paintings but the textures he's using to create the VHS visual is pretty interesting. I actually found him on Tumblr--that's another thing that we're obsessed with. I found a picture that someone posted and then tracked down who he actually was and found his own website. He's really cool." --Leo Ross
"I listened to this song on repeat on the tour stretch from Denver to Kansas, pretty much over and over again!" --Ioanna Gika
"We are obsessed with space ice cream [laughs], which is a freeze dried neapolitan. I feel like I started consuming them as a child--I would go the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, so that's where my habit started, and then it kind of grew from there. You can find them in museum gift shops, or actually REI has them. And if we're fortunate enough we have it on our riders--so when we're on tour if and when a venue actually has it, it's such an incredible treat. We just played the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, and they gave it to us and I could have married that guy [from 9:30 who got it for them]." --Ioanna Gika
The Select Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen
"I'm in the middle of reading it right now, and it's pretty good. It's a fictional story of a boy's journey to the Smithsonian from Montana; he's on a road trip and we're on one too, so it's fun to read." --Ioanna Gika
