Esther Burns – La Valeur Du Vide

Antonin Artaud was a French poet, playwright and actor, who spent large stretches of time in various asylums, was treated with opium regimens, on occasions was subjected to electroshock therapy. He died in 1948 while clutching, it is said, one of his shoes. Philip K. Dick was an American science fiction writer, famously prolific, who credits amphetamine use for his output. He suffered five failed marriages and claims to have become “suicidally depressed” after the fourth, bringing street people into his house just to fill the void. Robert Johnson was a Mississippi blues singer and guitarist who — in spite of his short life and remarkably short recording career — left a clear mark on the art form. He died mysteriously, possibly by strychnine poisoning at the hands of an irate husband.

Artaud, Dick, and Johnson — as well Charley Patton, who lived a charmed life, by comparison — form the guest list of the astonishing Esther Burns debut La Valeur Du Vide. This is an album, it seems, about madness.

It is barely an exaggeration to say that the members of Esther Burns are unknown. No EPs preceded La Valeur Du Vide, and a video search produces only a brief promotional teaser. The two musicians (Philippe Sangara and Emmanuel Chagrot) are far from household names. This is the music equivalent to watching a movie before seeing the trailer. But all cinema buffs will tell you that this is the best way to see a film.

La Valeur Du Vide opens with “Chimaera,” an inch-by-inch shuffle, powered by art house cello, the sound of Artaud’s caricatured ranting, and spaghetti western six-string. The bass guitar skirts the deepest edge of the register; a few shapeshifting field recordings arrive, fashionably late; and this insane march ends with nothing short of a marching band. The first few minutes here are a telling and poignant summary of the whole release: bewildering, yet savory. Disquieting, yet visionary. Esther Burns are not above telling a joke (“Merci Pour Les Poissons” seems like a nod toward The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), and they steer far clear of clichés. There are no rabbit holes or quoted ravens here.

The title track warms up the album’s first act, featuring a small-room piano waltz and some radio noise, for texture. Enter the big-tremolo guitar at the first quarter pole, and it has all the ingredients of a masterpiece even now. But an old Charley Patton vocal recording decides the matter: this old delta blues piece is a prodigious choice, haunting, dazzling, and snug. How the competing song structures interact when put together this way is, indeed, something to hear.

For what is already an unpredictable album, “Soliloques” is a surprise, a touching and slow composition for melodica, with piano accompaniment: a simple piece for a simple instrument. “Merci” is pure David Lynch, a darkly-lit lounge piece with a hypnotic rim-shot drum line, train station background noise, more Ennio Morricone guitar, and a two-finger piano composition. The rainfall introducing “Esther is Waiting” is something of a relief, and the lentissimo piano would be heartbreaking if it wasn’t mixed down to the point of willful afterthought. The title to “On Schizophrenia” has a delicious, clinical feel, like a peer-reviewed article in a mental health journal. The content does not belie the packaging: a testy, halting interview caked with a paranoid, often noisy composition for guitar and piano. It all promises to set the neighborhood dogs to barking.

But the finest song here is the closing one, “L’intranquille.”

A sparse, melancholy piano line opens the track: the sound of painful rebuilding (keep the central theme of the album in mind). Piano compositions can change in character with ease, and at 90 seconds in “L’intranquille” assumes a more optimistic posture. No change in key or tempo, just a slight shift in wind. Yet in short time some deep, baritone stringwork restores the museum quality of “Chimaera,” and things begin to fall apart at four minutes in with imprecise, industrial percussion and a last-moment shift from stereo to mono. In this context it is a brilliant touch: the sound of deaf ears, of closing off.

As debuts go, it can hardly get any better than this: a beautiful, intelligent, experimental piece, with some familiar components, but all repackaged for truly disarming results.

- Review by Fred Nolan for Fluid Radio

www.estherburns.free.fr