ESBE - Saqqara
New Cat Music
Esbe: All tracks composed and produced by Esbe: Voice, Multi-sampled strings, Upright bass, Electric bass and Electronic bass, and Percussion including conga, djembe and tabla. All of these latter are varieties of drum, originating probably from West Africa and (tabla) the Indian sub-continent, though the name tabla may derive from ‘tabl’, the Arabic word for drum.
Graduating from the Royal Academy of Music and winning the prestigious ‘Julian Bream Prize for Guitar’, Esbe developed a style of writing music based in part on Early Modern English music, her own legacy of Eastern European and North African music, as well as classical Indian music and British folk and jazz. Unfortunately for any dreams of a career as a classical guitarist, Esbe developed Musicians’ Focal Dystonia and was unable to perform at that level. It is a neurological condition thought to be caused by misfiring of neurons in the sensorimotor cortex: basically, and this is a very much simplified explanation, her fingers won’t do as they are told. How awful. However, in spite of the sadness of losing her playing ability, she has redirected the drive from her innate musical aptitude and used the time she would have spent practising to follow an art career alongside her studio recording.
At the same time, Esbe’s response in her music has been to develop her highly individual approach to producing music, drawing on her own eclectic, esoteric sources and providence. Saqqara is all of this added to what else she absorbed from a trip to Egypt and its legendary City of the Dead necropolis that extends across Giza and Dahshūr and is now some 4,600 years dead.
Saqqara is an inspiration, an assemblage of unearthly songs, much of which are delivered in what I think of as the Gregorian Chant style, in which several notes are sung to just one syllable. Romantic yet abstruse, the voice is imposing, bringing pensive, ancient characters to near-life in a beautiful film-scape imbued with the warmth and intensity of a sepia monochrome.
Esbe explains her approach to each of the tracks on the inside cover of the CD pack.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
New Cat Music
Esbe: All tracks composed and produced by Esbe: Voice, Multi-sampled strings, Upright bass, Electric bass and Electronic bass, and Percussion including conga, djembe and tabla. All of these latter are varieties of drum, originating probably from West Africa and (tabla) the Indian sub-continent, though the name tabla may derive from ‘tabl’, the Arabic word for drum.
Graduating from the Royal Academy of Music and winning the prestigious ‘Julian Bream Prize for Guitar’, Esbe developed a style of writing music based in part on Early Modern English music, her own legacy of Eastern European and North African music, as well as classical Indian music and British folk and jazz. Unfortunately for any dreams of a career as a classical guitarist, Esbe developed Musicians’ Focal Dystonia and was unable to perform at that level. It is a neurological condition thought to be caused by misfiring of neurons in the sensorimotor cortex: basically, and this is a very much simplified explanation, her fingers won’t do as they are told. How awful. However, in spite of the sadness of losing her playing ability, she has redirected the drive from her innate musical aptitude and used the time she would have spent practising to follow an art career alongside her studio recording.
At the same time, Esbe’s response in her music has been to develop her highly individual approach to producing music, drawing on her own eclectic, esoteric sources and providence. Saqqara is all of this added to what else she absorbed from a trip to Egypt and its legendary City of the Dead necropolis that extends across Giza and Dahshūr and is now some 4,600 years dead.
Saqqara is an inspiration, an assemblage of unearthly songs, much of which are delivered in what I think of as the Gregorian Chant style, in which several notes are sung to just one syllable. Romantic yet abstruse, the voice is imposing, bringing pensive, ancient characters to near-life in a beautiful film-scape imbued with the warmth and intensity of a sepia monochrome.
Esbe explains her approach to each of the tracks on the inside cover of the CD pack.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
