Nick Bollinger reviews an album of two halves from Wellington-based singer-songwriter-synthesist Estere.
Estere Photo: Paascalino Schaller
Wellington artist Estere announced last year that she would be releasing her new album in two halves, six months apart. Now, with the arrival of the complete twelve-song set,My Design, On Others' Lives, I realise why. Each half is a full meal, packing more ideas and inventions into its twenty-minutes than you’ll find in most entire records.
I’m still unpacking ‘Control Freak’, from last year’s first half: a propulsive piece of pop funk that seems to be about the power struggle between the waking self and the subconscious.
My Design, On Other Peoples' Lives Photo: supplied
Estere’s music works on several levels at once: sonically, rhythmically, melodically and lyrically. A producer/beatmaker as well as a singer and songwriter, her primary instrument might be her MPC sampler, which she calls Lola. But the materials she feeds it are raw and organic; anything from mouth percussion to the rustle of bamboo on the opening track, literally a field recording, made during a trip to Vietnam.
Elsewhere there are rhythms that seem to come from somewhere other than western funk or hip-hop, possibly inspired by her African heritage. (Her father, who lives in France, is from Cameroon.)
Along with deeply danceable beats, Estere’s music has all the elements you would expect from a great singer-songwriter; well-crafted lyrics and excellent tunes. ‘Rent’ is a celebration of survival as an artist in a land where that profession gets little reward, which pays rhythmic homage to Prince’s ‘Sign Of The Times’.
Yet even as a singer-songwriter she’s hardly typical. She doesn’t write ‘relationship’ songs, at least not the personal-confessional kind that epitomise the genre.
‘Ambition’ is a political parable about a prostitute who becomes President of the United States. Estere delivers the hilarious yet pointed lyric over a shuffle-beat, underpinned with an unorthodox bass clarinet.
It’s people’s relationships to the world they find themselves in that fascinates her; the ‘others’ lives’ of the album’s title. It could be the relationship between youth and technology, which she explores in the witty, wordy ‘Pro Bono Techno Zone’, or the fate of refugees in the intricately stitched song ‘Nomads’.
Her eye, like her musical ear, seems to roam around the globe. There’s even an entire song in French. But this isn’t just gratuitous globetrotting. There’s a sense of connection in anything Estere sings about, whether it’s a prostitute running for the presidency, a child in a military dictatorship, or – in the most obviously personal song of the set - a meditation on the Cameroonian grandmother she never met.
My Design, On Others' Lives is an exceptional record, rich and rewarding on every level; in its musicality and its humanity. I’ve already had a few months to digest the first half; now I’m going to take my time to enjoy the whole thing.
My Design, On Others' Lives is available on Bandcamp
