Erica Eso is a Brooklyn and Kingston, NY-based project led by composer / vocalist / producer Weston Minissali. Minissali has participated in New York’s music scene for more than decade as a member of projects like avant-rock post-pop band Cloud Becomes Your Hand (Northern Spy, Feeding Tube) and chimeric musique concrète experimentalists VaVatican (NNA Tapes), while his work at the head of Erica Eso has manifested with varied ensembles on albums including 2019 (Ramp Local, 2015) and 129 Dreamless GMG (NNA Tapes, 2018). Minissali’s music under the Erica Eso banner fuses compositional strategies of the avant garde, including the use of microtonal note voicings and advanced synthesis, with songwriting in the vein of art pop. His lush, tightly structured songs teem with melismatic topline melodies, layered vocal harmonies, and fast-shifting narrative arcs, all built over a sturdy instrumental foundation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYbzY39YwYw
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Kalbells’s sophomore album Max Heart (NNA Tapes, 2021) opens with the process of regeneration. “I’m rotting and I’m never coming back the way you knew me then,” Kalmia Traver sings with a combination of buoyancy and resilience on the opener “Red Marker.” From the beginning, Max Heart is an illustration of death and rebirth; letting go of what doesn’t serve us in order to leave space for the blessings that do. With Max Heart as their next chapter, central to Kalbells work is the process of creativity giving space for vulnerability and radicalism–continually practicing decolonization work and fighting against white supremacist, heternormative, and patriarchal models. Take their pre-show vocal improv practice of tintinnabulation (introduced by sometimes-drummer and honorary member Dandy McDowell) which Traver explains is “more about listening than it is about vocalizing; it’s more about creating that ecosystem together of trust and respect and interplay and play and joy. I think that that practice is definitely at the center of our work together.” Angelica Bess, Zoë Brecher, Sarah Pedinotti and Traver used this collection of ten tracks to embody prosperity and reciprocity.
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Erica Eso / Kalbells

Erica Eso / Kalbells