Esmerine 'Dalmak'

Vinyl includes Download Card.

Fourth Album From Modern Contemporary / Instrumental Rock Ensemble Led By Percussionist Bruce Cawdron (Godspeed You! Black Emperor) & Cellist Rebecca Foon (Silver Mt Zion, Saltland, Set Fire To Flames). Partly Recorded In Istanbul With Four Turkish Guest Players. Mixed By Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes, Wolf Parade, Suuns). When Esmerine surfaced with La Lechuza in 2011, the album signaled many things: the band's first new recordings in six years, an expanded line-up, and a song cycle inspired by and dedicated to the life and untimely death of a dear friend and fellow musician.

What wasn't immediately clear was whether this acclaimed record would mark the opening of a new chapter for the band, or stand alone as a singular work of eulogy and homage driven by emotion and circumstance.Esmerine's new album Dalmak emphatically confirms that the group has indeed continued writing, exploring and collaborating ' definitively extending its horizons in this new iteration of the band's trajectory.

Bruce Cawdron (marimba) resigned from his seat as drummer for Godspeed You! Black Emperor in 2012, allowing him to focus more fully on Esmerine alongside co-founder and cellist Rebecca Foon (Silver Mt. Zion, Set Fire To Flames); the two principals also recruited percussionist Jamie Thompson (Unicorns, Islands) and multiinstrumentalist Brian Sanderson as full-time members to solidify the group as a writing and performing quartet.

European tours in 2011-2012 brought Esmerine to Istanbul, where the group's enthusiastic reception led to an invitation for an artist residency in the city. Dalmak is the fruit of that visit: the majority of the album was recorded in Istanbul, where compositions by the band's four Canadian musicians were augmented by a number of Turkish guest players. "Dalmak" is a Turkish verb with many connotations: to be absorbed in, to dive into, to bathe in, to contemplate, to plummet. As a title for Esmerine's new album, dalmak" refers in a literal sense to immersion in the culture and music of Istanbul but also appropriately evokes the range of music that emerged from this immersion: a collection of songs that shift between meditative pulsing and enveloping restraint to headlong flights into rhythm and groove.

With Dalmak, Esmerine presents some of its most richly minimal and intimate music alongside what is surely its most explosive, energized and ornate. The album is a tour-de-force of cross-cultural music-making, emotive but unsentimental, deeply textured and detailed but never precious or pedantic, superbly guided throughout by a balance of DIY rock, new folk and modern  classical  / contemporary sensibilities.

With initial recording by Barkin Engin and Metin Bozkurt in Istanbul, Esmerine laid down the live bed tracks for the up-tempo rhythmic songs at the album's core: "Lost River Blues", "Barn Board Fire" and "Translator's Clos". Marimba, cello, drums, tenor banjo, bass and trumpet are joined by bendir, darbuka, erbane, meh, barama, saz and electric guitar from local players for these centerpiece tracks, where extended melodic themes and short solos are passed around and woven through staccato grooves and polyrhythmic vamps in deeply satisfying fashion.

The sessions continued back in Montréal at Breakglass, where Cawdron and Foon tracked the more studied cello and marimba songs "Learning To Crawl" and "White Pine", and where the album's gorgeously saturated warmth, depth and propulsive grit was achieved courtesy of Breakglass head engineer Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes, Wolf Parade, Suuns) and Ian Ilavsky, who mixed the album alongside Rebecca and Bruce.

We're thrilled to present this new album from Esmerine and to document the continued evolution of Bruce Cawdron and Rebecca Foon, two musicians with whom Constellation has enjoyed a decade-long relationship spanning multiple projects. Dalmak is a distinct and exciting highlight in their diverse and adventurous discographies.

Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. Learning To Crawl
2. Lost River Blues
3. Barn Board Fire
4. Hayale Dalmak

Side B:
1. Translator's Clos
2. White Pine
3. Yavri Yavri!