Ea Taesse

“One 55 minute long song divided into three parts. “

Ancient noise … not so much in terms of an actual implication in musical terms, but in regard on how ancient civilizations are viewed from today, how they remain to be recognized through a certain imprint and how they once had vanished – all too soon or maybe even all too sudden. It is a characteristic of the fluidity of history, where spacial continuity is rarely persistent over a longer period of time – the overall stability of the world of our days is a rare exception. To have a comparably melancholic instead of hectic conceptual musical approach when it comes to this subject appears natural, because otherwise those small glimpses of those days gone by, would vanish in the spasms of the information age – a time in which the corridors of what is considered as being new or innovative have shrunk to absurd proportions.

Ea Taesse, the debut album of the band Ea, demands attention from the listener, while avoiding it at the same time. This excessive composition, even though divided into three parts, sparks curiosity, as it is likely to turn people off. It is ambivalent down to its core. In some respect it is also a nuisance, because it reminds the listener on the existence of a past that has escaped a deeper analysis and understanding, which is lost to oblivion or some otherworldly sphere – should such a thing exist. With lyrics that have no source, but a merely labelled as being from an “ancient civilization”, the band leaves the listener somewhat abandoned about what is actually going on in this long cut up composition. Together with a certain conservatism in the song-writing, the sound and the arrangements one has to wonder what the mystical, what the ancient and the lost aspect of it all are and how these have found expression in the music. While it is impossible to understand the lyrics in any meaningful way, which is also due to the style of the actual vocal expression, the songs themselves come over comparably ordinary and without something outré and out of the common.

Yes, ordinary is the term appropriate for describing this piece of music. The flow of the motives may not be an imperative waiting to be answered, but it is also unable to open some space for discussion, wonder, amazement and bewilderment. The existence of the non-existence leaves nothing to the critical mind, due to the absence of that what actually should be. In fact, the “continuous” re-appearance of the keyboards and their sacral – i.e. inspired by what is commonly associated with what is played in a Christian church – is definitely something to be disturbed by. This clean and well tempered sound is anything one might expect when such a topic is being dealt with. Leaving this aside, one has also to point to the absence of ancient instruments, odd rhythmic arrangements or anything else that can comes to mind once ancient civilizations are being brought up in some way. Hell, even modern and still existing ones have a different spectrum of sounds, noises and conceptions than the Western world has and it takes little effort to discover these.

The terming of the music as being “metal ambient” seems to be appropriate in the light on how the music progresses over time and how the arrangements lead over to another. It is a save approach with a certain air of mysticism – also expressed through self-imposed anonymity of the band members –, but it is unable to leave a certain mark. A question that arouses is the following: what is it that the music attempts to tell us? Should we feel sad about the fading away of a certain ancient civilization or should be be glad that they are gone? Somehow the conceptual reduction of this aspect to a rather melancholic sound leaves a bitter taste, because it feels as if the complexity of the topic has been reduced unnecessarily and deliberately. In order to squeeze in as little as possible, the listener is unable to feel compassionate about this part of our past. The feeling that something has been lost remains in the realm of the impotence, because not only do the facets of the music not add up, but the aspects of the music are unable to leave even minimal traces – and therefore spark some kind of renewed interest – due to the coding of the used elements.

In the end this debut release of Ea is just a waste of time that consumes a good deal of it and leaves nothing. It refuses to tell something and comes over as a work with a good touch of “narcissistic superiority”. Once the music is over, there are no knew questions or a sparked curiosity, just a longing for something else, something more definite and something less pretentious.