Ecco2K
Birth nameZak Arogundade Gaterud
Born1994 or 1995 (age 28–29)[1]
Stockholm, Sweden
GenresCloud rap
Occupation(s)Designer, visual artist, rapper
Years active2013–present
LabelsYear0001

Zak Arogundade Gaterud (born 1994 or 1995), better known as Ecco2K, is a Swedish-British designer, visual artist, and rapper. He founded Drain Gang with childhood friends Bladee, Thaiboy Digital and Whitearmor in 2013. Having experience with graphics software since he was 5, Arogundade founded the band Krossad with Bladee, his then-classmate, in 2004. Three years later, he founded his first fashion brand, Alaska, and later joined the Swedish shoe brand Eytys. Over the next decade, Ecco2K appeared on albums with Drain Gang and directed music videos before releasing his debut solo studio album, E, in 2019. He went on to release EP PXE in 2021 and Crest in 2022, the latter with Bladee. Arogundade is known as a privative and secretive person, and has incorporated queer themes in his work.

Career

1994–2012: Early life and career

Zak Arogundade Gaterud[2] was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1994 or 1995.[1] His mother is a Swedish makeup artist, while his father is a British graphic designer, writer, and architect of Nigerian heritage.[3] Arogundade was raised in Stockholm with his mother and in London with his father;[4] he lived briefly in London, being mostly raised in the Hornstull area of Stockholm.[3]

Benjamin Reichwald (Bladee, pictured in 2016) was a classmate of Arogundade.

Arogundade had his first experiences with visual art at age 5. His dad gifted him a graphics software and taught him how to use it.[1][3] At the time, Arogundade liked to create covers and logos for nonexistent music and bands.[3] His interest for graphic design later expanded to include illustration and photography.[3] In 2004, he became classmates with Benjamin Reichwald (Bladee) and founded the punk-oriented project Krossad ("crushed" in Swedish) the same year.[1][3] They released a demo CD in 2007, which was subsequently ripped and uploaded online.[5] That same year, Ecco2K created his first fashion label, Alaska, a streetwear brand. He was talking online with Chinese factory managers who didn't know of his age.[1][3] This experience led him to join Swedish sneaker brand Eytys.[3]

2013–present: Drain Gang

In 2013, Arogundade founded the Drain Gang collective, then called Gravity Boys, with childhood friends Bladee, Thaiboy Digital and Whitearmor,[4] adopting the alias Ecco2K since then.[1] Originally part of Smög Boys, the four left and decided to create their own group.[6] The name "Ecco2K" was inspired by the titular character of the Ecco the Dolphin video game series.[7] Drain Gang signed with Year0001[6] and started regularly collaborating with group Sad Boys and labelmate Yung Lean.[4][1][6] The same year, Arogundade became Lean's creative director.[1] Still in 2013, Arogundade started his music career by releasing singles "Bleach", "Hold Me Down Like Gravity", and "Mirage";[2] "Hold Me Down Like Gravity" received a music video directed by Arogundade himself.[8] In 2015, he released an instrumental EP, Crush Resist.[5] He later appeared on Drain Gang compilation albums D&G (2017) and Trash Island (2019).[2] Arogundade also founded fashion brand g'LOSS, under which he designed Drain Gang merchandise.[1]

Cover for E (2019).

In 2017, Arogundade started playing his first solo live sets.[1] The next year, he walked the runway for Alyx Studio at Paris Fashion Week, and served as a panelist for the first "Challenge the Fabric" competition at London Fashion Week.[1] On 27 November 2019, Arogundade released his debut solo studio album, which was also a surprise album, E. To record it, Arogundade had to leave his day job as a designer and photo retoucher at Eytys.[1][4] It was recorded in Stockholm, Berlin, Los Angeles, London, Falun, and Bangkok,[9] and preceded by singles "AAA Powerline" and "Fruit Bleed Juice", with the latter receiving a music video.[1] The next year, Arogundade toured Europe[10] and released more music videos for E songs: "Peroxide" on 29 January,[10] and "Security!" on 30 July.[11] That year, he also released singles "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" with Bladee on 24 February,[12] and "Pollen" on 17 September, where Arogundade sings in Swedish.[13]

On 31 March 2021, Arogundade released a surprise EP, PXE, fully accompanied by a video from artist and animator Freddy Carrasco.[14] Unlike E, PXE was produced entirely by Arogundade.[15] On 19 January 2022, he released the standalone single "Amygdala" with Bladee.[16] Two months later on the 17th, both released a collaborative studio album, Crest,[17] which was "recorded amongst nature".[18] The Fader staff considered it the 22nd best album of 2022,[19] while Pitchfork included it in their list of "Best Progressive Pop Music" of the year.[20] After the album's release, Arogundade toured worldwide with Drain Gang in their first world tour as a collective.[21]

Musical style and public image

Zak is part of Drain Gang, a group of electronic and cloud-rap musicians.[3] Although Drain Gang's music is intimate, the lyrics aren't about the members, but "everyone else".[22] Regarding his work as Ecco2K, Arogundade tried to keep distance between the project and his personal identity: "Ecco is something I do; it's not who I am".[1] Jayson Greene wrote to Pitchfork that, along with Bladee, Arogundade produced dissociation music with "numb disorientation, but with flutey, high, fairy-like voices flitting about the mix". Regarding Arogundade, he said that he "sounds less like a human and more like a pixelated sprite". Greene said, "The immersion in smoother and more hospitable worlds than the real one is everywhere".[7] David Crone of AllMusic wrote that, in 2013, Arogundade's style was "rough yet original, combining distant, hollowed-out vocals with cloudy instrumentals and emotive lyricism". Over the decade, Arogundade "embraced technological, forward-thinking sounds taking influence from the rising hyper-pop and hyper-rap subgenres" and, in 2019, his debut album E consolidated his futuristic sound.[2]

Like other members of Drain Gang, Arogundade is a self-taught musician.[22] As a designer and editor, Arogundade directs and edits most of his own music videos, and has directed and edited multiple music videos for others,[1][3] including Yves Tumor.[6] Commenting on his video work, he said he is "trying to express that there is beauty and magic here, but without putting special effects on it".[23] Both Bladee and Arogundade have increasingly incorporated queer themes into their work, with the latter presenting as female in the music video for the song "Amygdala". With this, Drain Gang's LGBT listenership became more visible and increased online, with nonbinary, queer, and trans people discussing how Drain Gang helped them identify gender dysphoria and embrace their own identities.[22]

Arogundade initially tried to maintain his privacy and secrecy.[3][4] For some time, his Instagram account was private,[4] and he doesn't like to publish much information about himself.[3] He tried to distance himself from his "obsessive" fanbase,[1] finding it strange that he's "such a big part of other people's lives",[3] but found it difficult as, in his words: "I had my phone and my social media hacked by my fans, I've had music stolen and leaked by my fans, and I've had family members contacted".[1] He has been impersonated on Facebook at least twice.[3] Arogundade is particularly known for constantly changing his hairstyle in public.[3][8]

Discography

Albums

Collaborative albums

EPs

  • Crush Resist (2015)
  • PXE (2021)

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Sobolik, Thomas (2 December 2019). "Ecco2K's second coming of age". The Face. Retrieved 5 January 2024.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Crone, David. "ECCO2K Songs, Albums, Reviews, Bio & More". AllMusic. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Borrelli-Persson, Laird (2 September 2016). "Is There Anything He Can't Do? Meet Stockholm's Stylish Multi-Hyphenate Zak Arogundade". Vogue. Retrieved 5 January 2024.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Dandridge-Lemco, Ben (2 June 2020). "Zak Arogundade, a Musician and Designer From Stockholm". The New York Times. Retrieved 5 January 2024.
  5. 1 2 Dandridge-Lemco, Ben (8 April 2021). "Ecco2k: PXE EP". Pitchfork. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  6. 1 2 3 4 "Drain is officially a genre: here are five Drain Gang albums to stream now". Dazed. 22 November 2022. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  7. 1 2 Greene, Jayson (22 June 2022). "The Rise of Dissociation Music". Pitchfork. Retrieved 5 January 2024.
  8. 1 2 Friedlander, Emilie (9 December 2013). "Video: ECCO2k, "HOLDMEDOWNLIKEGRAVITY"". The Fader. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  9. ↑ Borrelli-Person, Laird (27 November 2019). "Swedish Musician Ecco2K Drops a Surprise Solo Album (and an Extreme New Look)". Vogue. Retrieved 19 October 2023.
  10. 1 2 Darville, Jordan (29 January 2020). "Ecco2k surveys a waterworld in the "Peroxide" video". The Fader. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  11. ↑ Maicki, Salvatore (30 July 2020). "Ecco2k bathes in light in his new video for "Security!"". The Fader. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  12. ↑ Maicki, Salvatore (24 February 2020). "Bladee and Ecco2k link for new single "Girls just want to have fun"". The Fader. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  13. ↑ Darville, Jordan (17 September 2020). "Watch the video for Ecco2k's new song "Pollen"". The Fader. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  14. ↑ Darville, Jordan (1 April 2021). "Ecco2k shares new EP PXE". The Fader. Retrieved 19 October 2023.
  15. ↑ Yalcinkaya, Günseli (2 April 2021). "6 albums to stream this week". Dazed. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
  16. ↑ Darville, Jordan (19 January 2022). "Ecco2k and Bladee share new single "Amygdala"". The Fader. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  17. ↑ Rowley, Glenn (18 March 2022). "Bladee and Ecco2k Release Surprise Album Crest: Stream". Consequence. Retrieved 21 March 2023.
  18. ↑ Brady, Keegan (19 April 2022). "Inside the Cathartic Bliss of Drain Gang, Gen Z's Emo Torchbearers". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 21 March 2023.
  19. ↑ "The 50 best albums of 2022". The Fader. Retrieved 16 December 2023.
  20. ↑ "The Best Progressive Pop Music of 2022". Pitchfork. 13 December 2022. Retrieved 4 January 2024.
  21. ↑ Yalcinkaya, Günseli (22 March 2022). "Photos that capture the offbeat style of Drain Gang fans". Dazed. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  22. 1 2 3 George, Cassidy (4 May 2023). "Drain Gang". 032c. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  23. ↑ Iadarola, Alexander (29 June 2021). ""I Don't Want Anything": An Interview with ECCO2K". 032c. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
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