ESMERINE
Dalmak
CST096    180gLP/ CD / DL
 
Out 3 September 2013
 
AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW.
 
And here's the next of our new releases for Summer-Fall 2013: Dalmak, the fourth full-length LP from Esmerine. The album is out September 3, and it features a quartet of Turkish musicians with whom the group collaborated during a pair of visits to Istanbul over the past couple of years, as well as appearances from Sarah Neufeld and Aaron Lumley. See below for info, including an MP3 of album track "Translator's Clos Part II" (premiered this morning by Decoder Magazine), or click here for the full run-down.
Esmerine will play a handful of live dates in Ontario, Quebec and New York to celebrate the release in early September. For a number of these shows the band will be joined by the group of musicians who appear on the album; needless to say these promise to be truly breathtaking. See below for dates (more to come in the next few weeks).
 

 
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 multi-instrumentalist 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 the band's four Canadian musicians were joined by an equal number of Turkish guest players: Hakan Vreskala, Baran Aşık, Ali Kazim Akdağ, James Hakan Dedeoğlu on various instruments.
Dalmak is a Turkish verb with many connotations: to contemplate, to be absorbed in, to dive into, to bathe in, to rush into, 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, 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 the local players for these centerpiece tracks, where extended melodic themes are passed around and woven through staccato grooves and polyrhythmic vamps in deeply satisfying fashion. The sessions continued back in Montréal at Breakglass Studio, 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 pulsing grit was achieved courtesy of Breakglass head engineer Jace Lasek (Wolf Parade, The Besnard Lakes, Suuns) and Ian Ilavsky, who mixed the album alongside Beckie and Bruce.
Click here for more info, and thanks for listening.
 

DD/MM/YY	PLACE	VENUE
03.09.13	Ottawa, ON	First Baptist Church
04.09.13	Montreal, QC	La Sala Rossa
05.09.13	Toronto, ON	The Great Hall
10.09.13	New York, NY	Littlefield

 

Constellation celebrates its 15th Anniversary with a series of five mini-festivals in Europe this November: the locations are Bern, Paris, Munich, Vienna and Leipzig, in partnership with some of our favourite venues and partners that have supported the label and its artists over the years,
 
Go here for an at-a-glance round-up of the line-ups, locations and ticket links.
 
Read here for a longer post about the events.
 
See below for a rendering of the commemorative screenprinted poster that will be available at the events (being printed by the Dis-patch Collective from Belgrade, Serbia – whose Constellation artwork exhibit will also be on display in Bern and Vienna) and a little video clip we produced for the celebrations.
 

 
 

The Paris 15th Anniversary CST shows are now sold out.


Information about all CST 15th events can be found HERE.


Nous invitons nos camarades français à prendre note des autres concerts en France en novembre, ainsi que de nos événements à Berne et à Bruxelles...

* * *

While we realise it's a bit of an extra journey for the good people of France, we remind everyone that about 50 passes still remain for the CST fest in Bern, Switzerland.


CST Heartland Festival passes for Bern are available here.


The Bern event is a Constellation takeover of the Heartland Festival and represents an expanded 4-day affair, with a CST art exhibit curated by Dis-patch Collective (Belgrade) and performances by several artists who cannot make the Paris weekend: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Colin Stetson, Hrsta, Nick Kuepfer and Khora.


Details for each night of the Bern event (and single night tickets) can be found HERE.


If you are looking for information about Bern accommodations, we encourage you to contact Dachstock@Reitschule HERE.

* * *

We would also like to note the following Constellation-related concert dates happening in France and Belgium as the label celebrates throughout November with many artists on tour:


DO MAKE SAY THINK
16.11.12  Metz FR  Musiques Volantes Festival  TIX


SANDRO PERRI + ERIC CHENAUX
15.11.12  Nantes FR  Stakhanov
16.11.12  Limoges FR  Centre Culturel John Lennon


THEE SILVER MT ZION + MATANA ROBERTS
19.11.12  Tourcoing FR  Le Grand Mix  TIX
20.11.12  Strassbourg FR  La Laterie  TIX


COLIN STETSON
14.11.12  Brussels BE  Ancienne Belgique VZW  TIX
20.11.12  Poitiers FR  Confort Moderne  TIX
21.11.12  Rennes FR  UBU1  TIX
22.11.12  Nantes FR  Pôle Etudiant
23.11.12  Gent BE  Theaterzaal Vooruit  TIX
24.11.12  Rouen FR  Le 106  TIX
25.11.12  Tourcoing FR  L'Hospice d'Havré - Maison Folie de Tourcoing  TIX


DO MAKE SAY THINK + SANDRO PERRI + ERIC CHENAUX
CONSTELLATION LABEL NIGHT @ AUTUMN FALLS FESTIVAL
26.11.12  Brussels BE  Atelier 210  TIX


 

 
BERN • PARIS • MUNICH • VIENNA • LEIPZIG
 
As previously announced, this November we're staging some mini-festival events in France, Switzerland, Austria and Germany to celebrate our 15th year as a record label. These have come together really nicely, more artists have been added in recent weeks, and a whole new city (Munich) as well!
 
Check this page for confirmed lineups and ticket links, and keep reading below for further details and testimonials.
 
We truly feel the present is a great moment to take stock of what we've done over the past decade and a half. Bands with whom we have some of our longest-standing relationships continue to make music among the most vital and inspiring to grace our ears, while in the past few years we've begun new relationships with artists producing equally jaw-dropping work, whose vision and integrity remind us why we started doing this in the first place.
 
We've felt an outpouring of warm support from our many friends and allies in Europe and around the world in organizing these events, while back home we've had the privilege of participating in the inspiring and unprecedented (in Canada) popular movement protesting tuition increases and the fraud of neo-liberal "austerity" economics that took over the streets of Montreal this spring. These days we truly feel more connected than ever to the local and global communities we consider ourselves part of, accountable to, and inspired by.
 
We're deeply grateful to everyone who's found occasional or sustained meaning and common cause with Constellation thus far, and genuinely look forward to spending time and celebrating with everyone that can make it out to these events in Europe.
 
And it goes without saying, we are utterly humbled and honoured by the support we've received from all of our presenting partners in these five European cities, most of whom we've had a long-standing relationship with in various respects. We set out to collaborate with the people who historically have meant a lot to us and our artists, and could not have hoped for more. Thanks from the bottom of our hearts.
 
• • • • • 
 
While the mighty Siskiyou has sadly had to pull out of any further appearances this year (read a message from the band here), our European mini-fest anniversary shows continue to be anchored by Do Make Say Think and Silver Mt Zion, along with Sandro Perri (backed by a full band), Eric Chenaux, Elfin Saddle and Hangedup. These six artists will be present at all four of our previously announced events in Bern, Paris, Vienna and Leipzig.
 
We have also now confirmed the participation of Carla Bozulich and Matana Roberts at all four of these events as well - whether as part of the "main stage" line-ups or in interesting site-specific or off-site performances. We're still ironing out a few of those ideas and logistics, but rest assured no performances will be running concurrently.
 
Additionally, we'll have Hrsta at most engagements, and have managed to yank Colin Stetson out of his crisscrossing solo tour schedule to appear on the final night of the Bern fest.
 
The Bern weekend will be truly epic, with a minimum of eleven CST bands appearing over four days, and the Dis-patch Art Collective from Belgrade, Serbia installing their wonderful exhibit "Ce côté en haut: The Fragile World of Constellation" - an exhaustive retrospective of the label's album and poster artwork. Looks like there will also be a label-related photo exhibit in Bern, as well as a couple of day shows, art talks and other off-site things going on too.
 
Also: Munich! The excellent Feierwerk venue in Munich has come on board to host two nights featuring 3-band bills each evening, with DMST, Perri and Chenaux playing on Nov 19 and SMZ, Hrsta and Matana Roberts playing on Nov 21.
 
Again, click HERE for a re-cap of the main stage line-ups in each city along with ticket links, and/or watch the video clip at the end of this post for a listing of those main stage line-ups at each event.
 
 

 
 
Other cool things we can tell you about:
 
It's already pretty darn exciting that Do Make Say Think will be performing their classic album Goodbye Enemy Airship The Landlord Is Dead in its entirety for their live set, but our presenting partner the Viennale will additionally be programming a series of experimental films to be projected during the band's set in Vienna. Since the Viennale is one of Europe's most respected and iconoclastic film festivals, this is sure to be a very special visual accompaniment to a very special musical performance.
 
Mike Moya was a founding member of Godspeed You! Black Emperor back in the early 1990s but pulled back from the band by the end of that decade to concentrate on Montreal-based projects as well as his excellent psych-folk group Hrsta throughout the 2000s. Moya then re-joined GY!BE when the group came off hiatus in 2010 and has been back in the third guitar chair with them ever since. Hrsta will perform at all the CST European events except Paris, and will be joined by new Godspeed drummer Tim Herzog, GY!BE/SMZ violinist Sophie Trudeau and Musique Fragile artist Nick Kuepfer for these sets.
 
Carla Bozulich will be premiering new material in a non-Evangelista guise; admittedly the distinction between these two identities has always been somewhat fluid, but we are super excited about the new music Carla has been working on and this will be a first opportunity to hear some of this stuff live.
 
Jerusalem In My Heart will perform in Leipzig. Date and location specifics have yet to be finally determined, but rest assured this will be very special and very cool. JIMH is the mutli-media project founded by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, a musician and sound engineer who is a close collaborator of Constellation on many fronts. He has engineered and/or mixed numerous albums in the CST catalogue, has made films and videos for several CST artists, has performed as part of Land Of Kush, and will be helping to stage-manage the Europe events. JIMH now includes experimental filmmaker Malena Szlam, who will join Radwan for the performance in Leipzig, involving multiple 16mm film projections and his totally unique and intense blend of synthetic and organic Arabic-influenced sound.
 
The Dis-patch album art exhibit will transition from Bern to Vienna and be installed in an anteroom of the Porgy & Bess venue in Vienna from opening night of the first CST show on Nov 21 through to the end of the 4-day Blue Bird festival on Nov 24.
 
Dis-patch will also be bringing limited edition screenprinted posters and hand-stitched cotton LP bags which are going to be quite lovely. We'll have 100 posters (4-colour on archival A2 size paper) and 50 bags available at each event in Bern, Paris, Vienna and Leipzig (apologies, but these will not be available in Munich). We promise these are going to be really nice items, reasonably priced and, y'know, all commemorative and stuff.
 
Anyway, we think these are going to be good times for all.
 
Now watch a video:
 

 

 
Evangelista head out for another string of European dates, taking in a swath of the continent over the last two weeks of September. Check dates below to catch the awesome, unsettling thing that is their live show.
Last year the band released In Animal Tongue, their fourth LP of harrowing, transcendent experimentalism, which, according to Tiny Mix Tapes, "ranks among the most provocative work [Carla Bozulich] has done in recent years..." You can listen to the whole thing here, and watch the video for opener "Artifical Lamb" below.
 

 

DD/MM/YY	PLACE	VENUE
12.09.12	Berlin, DE	Berghain Kantine
13.09.12	Leipzig, DE	UT Connewitz
14.09.12	Brussels, BE	Les Ateliers Claus
15.09.12	Bonn, DE	Kult 41
16.09.12	Tilburg, NL	Incubate Festival
18.09.12	Delemont, CH	SAS
19.09.12	Torino, IT	Blah Blah
22.09.12	Schio, IT	CSC
25.09.12	Vienna, AT	Chelsea
26.09.12	Budapest, HU	A38
28.09.12	Dornbirn, AT	Spielboden
29.09.12	Ebensee, AT	Kino