Ea Taesse

It’s funeral doom. It’s the melodic, orchestral kind of funeral doom, with the choral vocals and gigantic synth backing, the kind that I tend to like rather than the guttural ambient noise driven funeral doom. The big question is, does anything make it different from the rest?


Well, Ea’s gimmick is that they claim to have written about ancient cultures in their ancient, dead languages. Hard to tell of course as the vocals inevitably have a fairly small part to play in the overall picture of these three tracks and become part of the general orchestral feel. As a gimmick it’s kinda weak, but fortunately for Ea they have the goods to back it up.


There is a clear slowbuild structure to the three songs, not as pronounced and obvious as say Monolithe, but still quite neatly worked. The rogue element here is the drumming – its big and occasionally booming, and the person on the skins frequently lets loose a much more random style and provides an excellent counterpoint to the much more restrained and structured areas of the songwriting.


There are so many extra bits of instrumentation floating in and out of the mix that its hard to identify them, and in the absence of any concrete information its also therefore hard to tell if those extra instruments are analogue or digitally created. On the title track in particular they work well to enhance the general ebb and flow of the song, however in some ways it has to be said that perhaps the truism of ‘less is more’ might apply here – think of the amazing beauty of the classical passages entwined in the music of Shape of Despair for example. Simple, elegant, classy – Ea don’t quite pull it off in the same effortless way but they make a damn good stab at it nonetheless.


It’s not really a drone as much as a tide – rolling in, rolling out, the only thing missing being the actual sand and surf which would after all clog up the CD player. So instead, sit back and let the water soothe you, opening an eye occasionally when a particularly good drum roll or instrumental noise catches your attention – don’t try to follow it all too closely, just enjoy the sensation that Ea brings you.