sjesau

Wrong Faced Cat Feed Collapse

SJ Esau makes his Anticon-label album release on March 13th with Wrong Faced Cat Feed Collapse. SJ Esau is Sam Wisternoff, who grew up and still is a native of, Bristol. He has a past history that is worth taking note of, when his sprawling soundscape of 12 tracks grows and grows on you until it unfolds in your head into a flowering masterpiece of understated composition. Yeah, it knocked me up out of bed, and I let it right on in.

He was half way through a four-year rap career, in the vibrant late eighties UK Bristol scene, at the impressionable age of ten. Yes, TEN. He free-styled with 3D from Massive Attack at local parties, Tricky turned him onto Slick Rick and he was signed to a local label run by no less than Smith and Mighty, under the moniker of TFP. A lot to live up to ? Well, yes and no . Sam has used this heady apprenticeship, and more, to become an artist who has made an album that knows the impact and importance of melody, timing and `feel`; creating atmospheres that tense and then languidly stretch out all over Wrong Faced Cat Feed Collapse. I like his titles too.

Seeing humour in melancholy is both a lyrical and an artistic gift that SJ Esau deploys collectively, with dexterous musical creativity. The infusion of drama into the slumped darknes of Queezy Beliefs. A paused quiet.......... then driving distortion, coupled with claustrophobic strings, that explodes on Cat Track (he has no balls), and, the nagging jabs of stabbing horns in Geography (donkey dancing in the bath) over and under subtle hints and light, deft touches of building, growing percussion, all show to great effect this deft touch. I defy you not to get drawn into the eddy and swirl of the swooning Wears the Control, and, in a delicate, understated lope, become tangled in submerged sirens and underwater noises that somehow are competeing with, yet complementing, a harrowingly emotive vocal.

Sam Wisternoff, augmented by local Bristol musicians and artists Max Milton, Sean Talbot, Charlotte Nichols, Helen Sadler and Pippin Sadler, enters almost fabled genre-less territory without a stumble, his eyes firmly glued on a compass bearing heading towards expression, expansion and exploration. One part Pavement, one part Low, one part De La Soul, then the whole thing shaken, not stirred, under the influence of the back-catalogue of the Anticon-label, really only hints and nods at this albums vibes. Using a plethora of instrumentation, including the violin, trumpet, trumbone, clarinet, piano, guitar, bass, percussion, glockenspiel and something called The Bugbrand Light Dependant Theramin ( the creator of which, Tom Bug, mastered the album ) he changes tack and pace from shadowy quiet to explosively loud, subtle hooks to brick walls, featuring vocal melodies that twist and turn and a large fucky chest of folksonic understatement and claustrophobic musical creativity.

Still based in Bristol and still embedded in the cities creative artistic community, Wisternoff has an interesting back-catalogue; Anticon label`s Why?, amongst others, have reworked an albums worth of Wisternoff`s originals on Stop Touching My Cat, released in 2005. Wisternoff is also an active member and co-creator of numerous musical collaborations such as Jeremy Smoking Jacket, feauturing Rose Kemp`s vocals, Onanist Homework Robot and the Guano Ignoramus.

Wrong Faced Cat Feed Collapse knocks on your door a brooding, dark stranger, sells you a bag of bones and talks you into offering him a light to your best cigar. Before you know it, you are pumping his open hand, whilst welcoming him in like a long lost brother who you suddenly know like a best friend. You dont instantly know him, and, you didnt catch his name, but there are a lot of familiar family traits, you just know the order they are in is to be trusted.

Its out on Anticon on March 13th.

Thanks to SJ Esau , Anticon and Marisa @ FourPaws Media

OLO Radio have a fucky sounding podcast of SJ Esau well worth checking.

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