5252 fans
Searching for light in the dark since 2008.
Named after a Danish fairy tale, Berlin's Esben & the Witch craft fittingly eerie music that blends the delicate beauty of folk and shoegaze with the primal heaviness of metal. While the trio's 2011 debut album Violet Cries felt indebted to goth and post-rock, the band soon expanded its horizons and cranked up its amps, adding a heft to 2014's -engineered A New Nature, that laid the foundations for 2016's ambitious suite Older Terrors, which balanced crushing riffs with Rachel Davies' lucid vocals.
Esben & the Witch formed in 2008, when guitarist/keyboardist Thomas Fisher moved to Brighton and began making music with keyboardist/drummer Daniel Copeman. After deciding to make the music they were working on available to the public, the pair drafted Rachel Davies, a longtime friend of Fisher's, to become their singer and bassist. The trio self-released its 2009 debut EP 33 and followed it with the single "Lucia, At the Precipice," which released as a limited-edition 7" in 2010. That May, they contributed their song "Corridors," from 33, as the soundtrack to an installation by artist Karl Sadler as part of the London edition of the Creators Project. Later in 2010, signed the group and released the Marching Song single that October; in December, the band appeared on the long list for the BBC's Sound of 2011. That January, their goth-tinged debut album, Violet Cries, arrived to critical acclaim and reached number 13 on the U.K. Indie Chart.
To write the songs for their second album, Esben & the Witch retreated to a cottage in East Sussex in 2012. Davies penned all of the lyrics, taking inspiration from the writing of and Vladimir Nabokov. The band recorded Wash the Sins Not Only the Face with co-producer Tom Morris and released the album in early 2013. That July, they appeared at the East End Film Festival to perform a live score for the film La Antena.
In 2014, Esben & the Witch left to form their own label, , and released a split EP with . The trio worked with engineer on September 2014's A New Nature, which captured the increasing heaviness of their sound and drew comparisons to and . A move to Berlin prompted further changes in the group's sound on Older Terrors, a set of four epic-length songs incorporating metal, prog, and post-rock released by in November 2016. Following 2017's concert album Live at Roadburn, Esben & the Witch returned in 2018 with Nowhere, which introduced punk-inspired riffs into the trio's sweeping sound.
Returning in 2023 with the new album "Hold Sacred" The band stripped back their sound the songs are brooding, gentle, almost ambient; there are no live drums, and the instrumentals comprise simple, sparse guitar and keys. “We wanted to create a softer, calmer record; a record we’d listen to when we need soothing, like the ambient records we find comforting and, dare I say, almost spiritual,” says Davies. 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.”
