Glittering mandolins, jangling ukuleles, drums made from lentils, doors and bathtubs, oceans of vocals, thick washes of guitars. An album inspired by the four points of the compass.

10 MP3 Songs in this album (43:26) !
Related styles: Pop: Pop Underground, Folk: Alternative Folk, Type: Lyrical

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Details:
The group Esme Squalor was born in 2006 in London. He was then a solo performer using the traditional combination of Guitar and Vocals, where he gave many a performance over the course of two years.

However, things changed in 2008 when, bored of solo playing, the London scene, and finding everything too high-stress to effectively produce music, he took the bold decision to move to the Basque Country in the North of Spain.

There, he was enchanted to immediately find himself surrounded by an array of international musicians of great talent. Thus, in late 2008, he began rehearsing, experimenting and performing under the same name with an ever-growing group of interesting types.

Around the end of 2008 he decided that he had enough good songs, and enough support to begin forming the best of his catalogue into an album. Without the necessary resources to fund studio time, he constructed a studio a cupboard in his house, and began making noises with only a microphone, Garage Band, and whatever else he had to hand.

Before commencing, he had decided that the album needed to sound different. Thus, an early decision was taken to begin with as many homemade sounds as possible. As such, many of the percussive sounds were recorded using such household items as boxes of lentils, various doors, trays, elderly drums, and a bathtub. Ukuleles were used as a starting point for many of the melodies to try and escape a little from a traditional guitar sound.

Influenced by the type of sound that musicians such as Bat for Lashes, Vampire Weekend, Thom Yorke, Tom Waits and Paul Simon (amongst many) had variously managed to produce, he decided that it would be an excellent idea to give the album a backbone of tightly shadowed secondary melodies. As such, many of the principal instrumental melodies are carefully harmonised and/ or shadowed by several concurrent levels of backing vocals or instruments. It was hoped that this would give the album a depth that would allow it to stand up to many repeat listenings.

Midway through recording, Esme Squalor had the good fortune to meet Dimitris Asimis, a music producer working in London. Communicating using the wonder of modern silicone technology, they began working together to mix the raw files of the album into something truly special.

During the recording process that finished in June of 2010, Esme Squalor kept accumulating musicians, until he finally formed the six member live group of today. The members variously hail from England, Germany and Spain, and musically the group consists of guitar, two vocalists, electric mandolin, violin, bass and drums.

As such, Esme Squalor now constitutes an exceedingly versatile live group, and an exceedingly diverse ten-track album.

Should you be interested and wish to know more about us, please get in touch using the contact details below!

If you speak Spanish, all our latest activities tend to get posted on our website at www.esmesqualor.com

If you are not a Spanish speaker, our facebook group (Esme Squalor, Vitoria) and our myspace (www.myspace.com/squaloresme) are also filled with news on a regular basis.

If you want to write to us, then an email to esmesqualormusic@yahoo.co.uk should do the trick.

If you feel like calling to congratulate us personally, our number is 0034 689 40 88 05.