ESBE IS A COMPOSER, SINGER, PRODUCER AND SONGWRITER
**** RnR
Artful blend of sound colour and texture that draws us in.
MIDWESTBOOKREVIEW
A wondrous tour through reinvented classics. Highly recommended!
MUSIC STREET JOURNAL
To do a cover, you need to make it your own and this is a smashing success, intriguing, tastefully strange, haunting, artistic and so tasty. Sublime.
ERA JAZZU
Interesting, innovative, original arrangements. Covers in the Esbe version becomes a new standard.
CLOUZINE
A unique voice that delivers a transcendental aura. New interpretations sounding fresh for your ears.
Dusk darkens to a solid winter sky.
A full moon hovers, waiting to shine. Standing alone on the dirty shingle bank of the Thames, Tower Bridge looming above with foreboding history, someone was watching me. I sang quietly, in the softest voice I could, keeping my mind occupied with the melody, the swish of the river, and the gentle waves
that arrived, then departed, as they had for millennia.
A Roman woman picks up a delicately engraved earring she lost that morning. A sailor, on his way to embark for Jamestown in 1625 steals a last kiss from the lover he might never see again. Anne Boleyn’s barge passes through Traitor’s Gate’ on her final voyage. The feint giggles of a docker’s son at a Punch and Judy show on the 1930’s shore. The glint of a sliver shard discarded or perhaps thrown into the river for luck by a hopeful Royal Mint worker.
The Thames. Moody, beautiful, historic.
And then the songs. Like the river, they speak to me, not just because they are some of the best songs ever written, but because I longed to sing them.
Turn the lights off, look out at the moon, and think about those you love,
loved, and lost.
Esbe’s defiant creative philosophy and her belief that pop music shouldn’t be pigeon-holed by either instrumentation or harmonic construction has been put into practice on her new album UNDER COVER.
Before she embarked on the production, Esbe knew that, for these songs to have a renewed meaning for a contemporary audience, the arrangements, approach and production would have to be substantially different from the original recordings. After all, these are all perfectly formed songs by iconic musicians with distinctive arrangements - classics that everyone knows and loves. This was both a subconscious and conscious decision. Esbe didn’t contrive to work in a particular way, she just approached the arrangements as if she’d only ever heard the vocal, almost treating the song as a re-mix.
That process is perhaps nowhere better exemplified than on the album’s first single YESTERDAY, a track that gives fans a sneak peek at what is to come on the full album while highlighting Esbe’s love for exploring sounds to create a distinct palette for an album and then adapting that sonic theme for each individual track.
Yesterday - A Taste Of Honey - Don't Explain - Night And Day - The Sound Of Silence - Eleanor Rigby - Bridge Over Troubled Water - Amazing Grace - Summertime - Silent Night