|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
LP
|
|
UTR 128R-LP
|
Less of Everything was released in 2020 on Upset The Rhythm and sold out quickly. Limited repress on sun yellow vinyl sees the album finally available on vinyl again. Es is Maria Cecilia Tedemalm (vocals), Katy Cotterell (bass), Tamsin M. Leach (drums), and Flora Watters (keyboards). Their 2016 debut EP, Object Relations, released on influential London punk label La Vida Es Un Mus, was described as "mutant synth-punk for our dystopian present" (Jes Skolnik, Bandcamp, Pitchfork). The band has since become a vital presence in London's underground DIY music scene, as well as having toured the UK with the Thurston Moore Group in 2017. After a period with members split between Glasgow and London, Es recorded Less of Everything with Lindsay Corstorphine (Sauna Youth, Primitive Parts) in Tottenham in 2019. As in Object Relations, the dynamic between Cotterell's bass and Watters's keyboard is at the heart of Less of Everything's sound: intertwining sub-zero melodies, gothic anarcho-punk influences (think Kukl, Malaria, X-Mal Deutschland) and some kind of entirely unlocatable aquatic component. When combined with Murray Leach's precise drumming, the outcome is original and immediately recognizable. Es are a group who know how to leave space, how to strive for minimalism without sacrificing aggression or dynamism. This dynamic provides the perfect backdrop for Tedemalm's relentless, pointed vocal style. While comparable "cold" sounding groups might affect an impersonal, safer mode of lyrical or vocal detachment, Tedemalm's strategy is to "push the lyrics as far as I can thematically until they become absurd -- overly dramatic ... while still being sincere in the feeling they're trying to invoke. I try to apply as much emotion as I can." The result is something intense but nuanced, confrontational but complex.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
7"
|
|
UTR 153EP
|
If Es's debut album for Upset the Rhythm explored the "tension between intent and interpretation", the London group's 2023 EP, Fantasy, constructs a coda for resistance against the distorted gaze. A four-track contact-high anxiety amid fact and facsimile, the new release attempts to define a sound that still resonates in an increasingly confused public theatre, where cerebral dreams manifest in corrupt fascination. Echoing the legendary Pylon or the later, disco-inspired releases from PIL, tracks like "Emergency" and "Unreal" blend the band's established disjunctive style of gothic restlessness with brighter, poppy, and danceable tones. These stylistically unwind in transition with the increasingly claustrophobic pieces like "Too Late" and "Swallowed Whole", syncopating a parallel design of the frantic and the fashionable. Paired with a lyrical intricacy which emits a desire to break the fetish of false representation, "Fantasy" is a reminder that worthy punk records, like any manifesto of neurotic suspicion, balance testimonial, speculative-fiction, and social critique. Indebted to the past but pointed sharply to the future, Es deconstruct our modern wreckage of personhood and self-deceit, granting a sense of solidarity inside alienation. Inside Fantasy you can visualize your own estrangement, and it is only when this mirror fades that we find the tools to fight back. 180 gram, curacao color vinyl.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
UTR 128LP
|
Less of Everything. The title of Es's first full-length LP could be interpreted as a manifesto pledge, an outright demand or a purely literal sonic descriptor of the London quartet's glacial form of punk rock music. This tension between intent and interpretation has been a fundamental element of the group's output from their formation. Es is Maria Cecilia Tedemalm (vocals), Katy Cotterell (bass), Tamsin M. Leach (drums), and Flora Watters (keyboards). Their 2016 debut EP, Object Relations, released on influential London punk label La Vida Es Un Mus, was described as 'mutant synth-punk for our dystopian present' (Jess Skolnik, Bandcamp, Pitchfork). The band has since become a vital presence in London's underground DIY music scene, as well as having toured the UK with the Thurston Moore Group in 2017. After a period with members split between Glasgow and London, Es recorded Less of Everything with Lindsay Corstorphine (Sauna Youth, Primitive Parts) in Tottenham in 2019. As in Object Relations, the dynamic between Cotterell's bass and Watters's keyboard is at the heart of Less of Everything's sound: intertwining sub-zero melodies, gothic anarcho-punk influences (think Kukl, Malaria, X-Mal Deutschland) and some kind of entirely unlocatable aquatic component. When combined with Murray Leach's precise drumming, the outcome is original and immediately recognizable. Es are a group who know how to leave space, how to strive for minimalism without sacrificing aggression or dynamism. This dynamic provides the perfect backdrop for Tedemalm's relentless, pointed vocal style. While comparable 'cold' sounding groups might affect an impersonal, safer mode of lyrical or vocal detachment, Tedemalm's strategy is to 'push the lyrics as far as I can thematically until they become absurd -- overly dramatic ... while still being sincere in the feeling they're trying to invoke. I try to apply as much emotion as I can.' The result is something intense but nuanced, confrontational but complex." --Owen Williams, 2020 180 gram, transparent vinyl; edition of 500.
|
|
|
|