Relase Date: May 12th, 2023
Label: Nostromo Records (CD/LP/Digital)
Esben & The Witch have announced the release of their new album Hold Sacred to be released 12th May 2023 on Nostromo Records. Pre-order the Album HERE and Watch “The Well” AT THIS LOCATION. Tourdates for Europe posted!
Everything’s changed and nothing’s changed,” says vocalist Rachel Davies of their sixth album, Hold Sacred. “This kernel is the purest essence of Esben and the Witch since our inception.” It’s a product of the trio’s deeply important, 14-year-spanning friendship. Together, they shut themselves away to plunge into and search for solace in the depths of exhaustion, depression, anxiety, existential fear – and all beginning long before the world shut down and changed irrevocably.
Today they release the first single from the album. “The Well” is an eerie, echoey meditation on the experience of depression. Though Davies begins the song in a dark, isolated place, she goes on to plot an escape, clinging to glimmers of resolve and hope. “I can climb out if I dig my fingers in,” she vows (a nod to fan favourite track, 2014’s “Dig Your Fingers In”).
“A voice echoing from the bottom of a well. A call from a chamber, from within oneself, to summon the strength to climb out of the darkness, when it seems impossible.” Davies explains. “To call upon things often deemed frightening and to change your perception of said demons in order to survive. To build a ladder of light to aid your own escape.”
The song is accompanied by a stunning video. Inside a grotto encrusted with shells and fossils, quartz shimmers in the dark. Minerals adorned with spiderwebs glint in the light that falls through a circle in the chamber’s ceiling. A woman hides here, safe with her secrets, alone in a hermitage, waiting in exile. Stalking the folly she seeks to step out of the dark and into the light, gathering herself to leave and face the outside world.
Watch/share the video for “The Well” HERE
Stream “The Well” HERE
The song’s sentiment, of clawing oneself through the darkness in whatever form is possible, is at the core of the entire album. “It touches upon a spiritual strength, an enlightenment of sorts and a will to clamber out of despair and follow the light,” says Davies.
Tourdates:
22/05/2023 DE Berlin Cassiopeia
23/05/2023 DE Hamburg Hafenklang
24/05/2023 DE Cologne Gebäude 9
26/05/2023 DE Darmstadt Oetinger Villa
27/05/2023 FR Strasbourg La Grenze
28/05/2023 NL Haarlem Patronaat
29/05/2023 FR Paris Le Petit Bain
31/05/2023 CH Zürich Bogen F
01/06/2023 AT Wien Viper Room
02/06/2023 CZ Prague Kasarna Karlin
03/06/2023 DE Leipzig Moritzbastei
Esben and the Witch — comprising Rachel Davies, Thomas Fisher and Daniel Copeman — began in Brighton in 2008, later decamped to Berlin, and is now split three ways across the UK, Germany and the US. Their winding geographical journey feels representative of their path as a whole. The band have snaked through various scenes and sonic worlds across their 14 years together, while always squirming away from an easy genre classification. Their first two albums, 2011’s Violet Cries and 2013’s Wash the Sins Not Only The Face — both released on Matador Records — offered gothic, electronic-tinged dream pop and post-rock. Beginning with the Steve Albini-produced A New Nature (2014, self-released on their own Nostromo Records), they came to explore heavier post-punk and metal textures, which they intensified through 2016’s Older Terrors and 2018’s Nowhere (both via Marseille-based metal label Season of Mist).
In the summer of 2019, the band retreated to a villa outside of Rome, with no expectations or pressures but simply the intention to enjoy each other’s company and see what musical inspiration may arise from that. This is where the rough sketches of the songs that would form Hold Sacred came to be.
The songs that were emerging were different than any previous. They’re brooding, gentle, almost ambient; there are no live drums, and the instrumentals comprise simple, sparse guitar and keys. The band used no outside producers or engineers, keeping the process limited to the three of them from start to finish — harkening back to the spirit of their earliest days when Copeman would record them in his bedroom and bathroom.
What the album’s title asks us to hold sacred is all of these little pieces of light, whether they’re found in self-sufficiency, the support of our loved ones, or the spiritual power of the earth. The album’s existence is a tribute to that; in a moment of brokenness, the three human beings of Esben and the Witch held each other up, and helped each other limp through.
“I feel proud of us for staying strong as a trio, as a weird little family that has managed to create something out of the darkness that hopefully shimmers, like a crystal in the mud,” says Davies.“I am proud of not giving up, of maintaining our integrity throughout. This is the sound of three people who love and support each other, navigating the ever present figure of the black dog; and if we can provide help or solace for anyone else, also haunted, then that is value enough.” Now, from here, anything could happen. “Perhaps this record will be our last, or perhaps it’s just another beginning.”
Now, from here, anything could happen. “Perhaps this record will be our last, or perhaps it’s just another beginning.”
Photo Credit: Sophie Fox
High Res HERE
Esben And The Witch
facebook
bandcamp
Nostromo Records
homepage
facebook