EP Review: ESA - Eat their young / The Scorn

Artwork editing - Olivia De Lame

Symbols of currency carved in to teeth, set amongst a wired shut and shattered jaw. The perfect metaphor for this EP.

There are some artists out there who you can never quantify.

The first time I saw ESA play live I was unaware of Jamie Blacker's Industrial power noise - Deus Ex Machina - that takes it's form in ESA.

I stood at the front of the Elektrowerkz stage eagerly waiting for Memmaker to play. Before that I was to be absolutely destroyed by Jamie's set, giving real vindication to the name of Electronic Substance Abuse because although I was sober at the time, (I had to drive home) I felt one of the most psychoactive intense moments I've been lucky enough to experience; The very reason for why people say music is what makes life worth living.

This was something different though, this wasn't great songs, and feel good rhythms, it was pure, unadulterated shock and chaos which antithetically can only come from the order of absolute order and skilfull perfection.

What do I mean by this?

What I experienced was a constant wall of power noise, of primal, soul crushing loops and beats. An overwhelming cacophony of aural assault that took control of me and made me rave until my legs were almost shattering and I had NO CONTROL over that.

This chaos of music had possessed me; However music can't just be thrown together to achieve these results. It takes the disciplined skill to put every single beat in it's correct place. Every single sound has to be uniformly ordered in it's chaos to bring about the sounds that have made Jamie the KING of electronic music.

All hail to the king.

That covers the chaos theory, now for the shock..

If the shock of losing control of my body and mind to that set wasn't enough, the violent and macabre images being played on the stage were equally shocking; so much so that a girl next to me went from dancing away happily to staring mouth agape and quite uncomfortable at the visuals.

Here there was a turning point. For me this seemed like a form of catharsis; of coming to terms with the darker side of life and instead how to stand against it and how to improve in all aspects of life. Sadly for the girl next to me it seemed the opposite was true, she wanted to hide from these realities and withdraw from not only what was uncomfortable to her, but also from herself. At least this is how it seemed as she backed out of the crowd.

ESA is the true primal music of the soul, not some £2.99 Chakra meditation