Emserine – Dalmak

Esmerine are one of the more loosely-related Godspeed You! Black Emperor side projects. It features Bruce Cawdron, the drummer from GY!BE (he also plays in Set Fire to Flames), alongside cellist Beckie Foon, who plays with both Set Fire to Flames, HRSTA and A Silver Mt. Zion (all other Godspeed side projects, keeping up?). Probably due to the members’ other bands, they’re frequently labelled as a post-rock band. However, to my ears this owes much more to chamber music than it does post-rock traditions. It’s a far cry from Godspeed, but it’s still a fascinating listen.

Opening track ‘Learning to Crawl’ comes from a fairly basic modern classical direction, but it’s really beautiful and works great as an opening track. ‘Lost River Blues’ I and II explore Arabic musical traditions over a background of ambient and more upbeat modern classical respectively to moderate success. ‘Barn Board Fire’ is probably the closest thing to a post-rock track on the album, but it’s laced with heavy folk rhythms, and it’s absolutely fantastic. ‘Hayale Dalmak’ is a fairly ambient track, but it fits in nicely. ‘Translator’s Clos’ I and II are a bit more upbeat, and they really don’t do it for me. ‘White Pine’ on the other hand, is a really lovely track, again from a more basic modern classical direction and ‘Yavri Yavri’ closes the album with another really nice ambient piece with a few strings over it. This is an album of inconsistent styles, but it all meshes together fairly well. The tracks are, for the most part, really quite nice, and there’s a few that I would go as far as to call strikingly beautiful. It’s not hugely exciting: it’s pleasant, and I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way. It’s really quite lovely, just don’t expect F#A#∞.