Montreal-based chamber collective Esmerine are set to release their fourth album, Dalmak, via Constellation on September 2.
It’s the follow-up to 2011’s La Lechuza and is the product of the band decamping to Istanbul after stopping there on that album’s supporting tour. The group’s core members, former Godspeed drummer Bruce Cawdron and Rebecca Foon (who released her solo debut LP, I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us, on Constellation earlier this year), made full-time members of Jamie Thompson and Brian Sanderson, and also drew on the help of Besnard Lakes man Jace Lasek to engineer a number of the tracks recorded in the band’s home city.
They also recruited a number of Istanbul musicians, Hakan Vreskala, Baran Aşık, Ali Kazim Akdağ and James Hakan Dedeoğlu, to record on Dalmak (which broadly means "to be absorbed in" in Turkish), most notably through the three "centrepiece" tracks, ‘Lost River Blues’, ‘Translator’s Clos’ and ‘Barn Board Fire’, recorded in the city, with their main set-up augmented by bendir, darbuka, erbane, meh, barama, saz and electric guitar.
We’re excited to host a first play of one of these, ‘Barn Board Fire’ – listen below and head to Constellation to pre-order the album here:
