We were fortunate enough to have seen Esmerine a number of times many years ago and their chamber music / post-rock hybrid has a vitality of its own that translates well to the recorded format.
I must confess to losing touch with them over the last little while, but here we are, five years on from 2017’s Mechanics Of Dominion with their third record in the trilogy that started in 2015 with Lost Voices.
There are a few new faces taking their places beside Becky Foon and Bruce Cawdron, with Brian Sanderson bringing the eclectic horn contingent and Philippe Charbonneau on bass and synth as well as tape echo and drones. This wilful experimental element is always welcome, but there is a subtlety that is more about additional texture than throwing the listener off course.
The beauty of Esmerine is that as soon as the album opens, you can draw a deep breath and allow yourself to be borne along, subsumed by the interplay between cascading piano flurries and the slower, more resonant strings. They capture a duality, forest sound that hears the wind play through leaves, its constant movement finally reflected by the percussion captured like a glorious sunrise. It is open-air music, impossible to corral. Even when moving gently it is still of the open plain and the vast sky, with Philippe’s drones reflecting that wild emptiness.
The ease with which they move between styles on Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More is impressive, from the gentle waltz-like concoction of “Hymn For Rob”, which welcomes extra violin from Sophie Trudeau and Aliayta Foon-Dancoes, to the juxtaposition of clean piano and grinding drones that is “Imaginary Pasts”. Here producer Jace Lasek adds sweeping feedback guitar and the way the group plots its interlocking course brings too mind a heavier Rachel’s, but the bass, particularly welcome, adds an irresistibility here.
The wonderful horn-laced “Fractals For Any Tonality” is too short and just demands fleshing out into a more enriching piece. “Foxtails And Fireflies” is much more textural, a half-forgotten lullaby, the instrumentation detached and slightly hopeless, reflected in a dusky soundscape. It is surprisingly fragmented, but perhaps due to the nature of recording and the isolated circumstances of Becky and Bruce then this shouldn’t be such a surprise.They are trying to evoke that sense of remove with which so many artists were confronted over the past couple of years, but not allow it to be the only sensation that the listener takes away. The bounced satellite signal that joins the fleet piano and measured drone clouds on “Wakesleep” is a welcome surprise, while the finale of “Number Stations” is a sub-aqueous ambient drift. Jace’s beautiful circular guitar figure gives the piece a boundless post-rock swell, the welcoming splashes of strings turning in on themselves, bathing in a sunset radiance that draws the album to a glorious finish.
Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More is an absolute welcome return and one which feels as though it has indeed been with us forever, the warmth of sound and magical interplay an obvious step on from their last outing, but with enough fresh input to make it necessary. Let’s hope the get on the road again soon.-Mr Olivetti-
