Description
Esben and the Witch present their first live album, recorded live at Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands, April 2017. The release showcases the bands evolution from their prog-leaning electronic origins, live-to-tape experiences recording with Steve Albini through to working with respected metal label, Season of Mist, on their latest album Older Terrors.
Sylvan, taken from Older Terrors opens the set, setting the tone and gradually sprawling outwards, filling the room at Roadburn Festival with its carefully paced build and confident layering of overdrive, painting an image of a forest in flames. Dig Your Fingers In and No Dog both from A New Nature (2014, recorded with Albini) take on a road-tested force and are expertly captured by Roadburn Festivals engineers.
Side B starts with the haunting The Fall of Glorieta Mountain, a live favourite for many a year, which features as a highlight on the bands second outing for Matador Records Wash The Sins Not Only The Face. The reverb of the room and the hushed grace of the crowd adding to the piece and setting the scene for A New Natures epic centerpiece The Jungle.
Live At Roadburn is released by Esben and the Witchs own label, Nostromo Records, and is limited to 500 copies on bone coloured vinyl.
Say the band of this recording: Friends, we are very proud to present our first live album. We were honoured to be invited to play Roadburn but never thought we would be able to document it in this way. Yet here we are when we heard the live recording back it felt like a fitting testament to the years we have spent together, writing, recording, travelling, sweating on stages, sitting in airport bars, sleeping in the van, lugging gear, all of it. This, in the rawest sense, is a document of where we found ourselves on a day in April, eight years after we first started out together. Thanks for sharing it with us.
This hell-spun sprawl of Portishead-gone-Swans noise is a reminder of why so many fell in love with this band in the first place. Drowned In Sound
?Esbens monstrous swirl of noise threatens to chew up and swallow all within earshot Stereogum?
Veritable tornados of sound irresistible The Line Of Best Fit?
An arresting step towards the light Mojo?
Richer and more refined than any of their contemporaries NME
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