ESMERINE
ESMERINE

Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More (2022)

                      WINNER - "Instrumental Album of the Year" / "Album Artwork of the Year" at the 2023 Juno Awards

 

"Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More est une œuvre à la fois exigeante et accessible, elle contient en elle une force de transcendance. Ce disque fonctionne dans une forme de crescendo émotif." 

BENZINE

“The beauty of Esmerine is that as soon as the album opens, you can draw a deep breath and allow yourself to be borne along.”

FREQ.ORG

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Mechanics Of Dominion (2017)

“Esmerine’s style is a music genre of itself. Mechanics of Dominion is a marvelous release and when it gets you with its overwhelming concept and brilliant execution you can’t help but play it again.” – Echoes And Dust
 

 
 
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Mechanics Of Dominion is perhaps Esmerine's most dynamic and narratively-informed work, tracing an arc through Neo-Classical, Minimalist, Modern Contemporary, Folk, Baroque, Jazz and Rock idioms to invoke lamentation, meditation, resolve, resistance and hope. It is a requiem for our intractably suffering planet and a paean to the inscrutable, essential dignity of indigenous ethics and the natural world, and to modern human frailty and ingenuity. 
  
Stylistically, Mechanics Of Dominion brings mallet instruments to the fore, with marimba, glockenspiel, piano and amplified music box providing a prominent foundation and through-line on the album's diverse tracks. Multi-instrumentalist Brian Sanderson's contributions are also an ever greater part of Esmerine's songwriting – his stately melodic lines on horns and acoustic strings are formidable elements in the ceremonious lyricism and keening vitality of this song cycle. 
  
Mechanics Of Dominion is also another superlative iteration in Esmerine's dedication to artwork and packaging, this time featuring the work of Montréal artist Jean-Sebastien Denis to beautifully echo the album's compositional balance of abstraction, tension and emotional colourations. 

 
 
 
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Mechanics Of Dominion 2018 Juno nominee for Recording Package Of The Year.

Five works from the Imbrications series by Jean-Sébastien Denis are included as a set of 12″x12″ art prints in the Deluxe Vinyl edition and the first 500 copies also include a bonus 12″x19″ art print poster.
All Vinyl packages include an MP3 download card.

 
 
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Lost Voices (2015)
Constellation Records

"A dynamic nine-song collection that ranges from dark and brooding to uplifting and celebratory... Soaring, dramatic and entirely engaging."
Exclaim!

#4 Album of 2015
A Closer Listen

Winner of the 2016 Juno Award: Recording Package Of The Year
2016 Juno Nominee: Instrumental Album Of The Year

 
 
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Dalmak (2013)
Constellation Records

"Meditative drones and shifting melodies of the Canadians’ strings and percussions are vamped up by an array of [Turkish] sounds...in a thrilling and meaningful conversation."
New Internationalist

“A listen of brutal intensity and beautiful celebration...At times, melodies are plucked quietly, arcing as delicately as black eyelashes, but they never deviate from what is at the center – an intense cauldron of dynamic fire and free flowing passion.”
Fluid Radio

 
 
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La Lechuza (2011)
Constellation Records

La Lechuza is an eulogy to Lhasa de Sela and a testament to the newfound creative relationships that she helped bring forth
snowdayforlhasa.com

"A towering achievement... emotive and powerful, delicately wrought and stunningly beautiful. The recording is outstanding... a rare pleasure from start to finish."
The 405

"What distinguishes it from so many artists skirting the overlaps between new folk and chamber music-style arrangements is the attention to composition and content. Where lesser talents are content merely to create mood, satisfying themselves with the surface rewards of alternative timbres, Esmerine wrap mood around substance."
The Wire

 
 
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Aurora (2005)
Madrona Records

Esmerine released two critically-acclaimed albums on their own Madrona Records imprint. These albums had one foot in the new music/experimental terrain of contemporaries like Rachel's or Town And Country and the other in a more visceral and lyrical instrumental landscape, as cultivated by the likes of The Dirty Three and Godspeed You! Black Emperor

 
 
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If Only A Sweet Surrender To The Nights To Come Be True (2003)
Resonant Records / Madrona Records