Esmerine
Electrowerkz, London
21/09/2011

Canadian instrumentalists Esmerine wade through the crowd and take to the dimly-lit stage for their first ever London show. Initially sat cross-legged, the audience take to their feet so there’s room for the stragglers queuing to get in.

To the backdrop of live visuals by projection artist Clea Minaker, Bruce Cawdron (Godspeed You! Black Emperor) switches between marimba and glockenspiel whilst Jamie Thompson jumps back and forth from drum kit to tuned percussion. At the same time, cellist Beckie Foon (Thee Silver Mt. Zion) sways in her own little world whilst Sarah Pagé plucks away at her harp. Performing tracks from album ‘La Lechuza’ (their first release in six years), the music immediately brings to mind the American composer Steve Reich – both artists use repeating minimalist patterns, and both delight in the percussive sound of orchestral, melodic mallet instruments.

At first, the repetitive bassy barrage of wooden marimba and the intermittent drone-like cello tones give the music a hypnotic feel. And with the addition of twinkly glockenspiels the music takes on a more mysterious quality – the curious ‘Last Waltz’ would sound great in the background at a fairground side-show. Unfortunately however, you can’t help but feel that a lot of these songs would work better as the accompaniment to something else. For the penultimate piece, Bruce Cawdron brings to the stage a wind-up music box. He jokes about making a ‘loop’ by taping identical pieces of punched card together. “Who needs pedals”, he asks, as he feeds the ‘music’ into his toy instrument.

Throughout the night the band ironically refer to their tracks as ‘pop songs’, and the last song of the night is jokily dubbed ‘Glock Rock’. Whilst the set is enjoyable, except for a few lively moments it’s a long way from ‘pop’ or ‘rock’. Instead what you have is decent atmospheric music, that with a little listener imagination, just about works in a live setting.

David Tshulak