USI ES & WHOLES – From A Whisper To A Scream In ‘BERLIN’
Daily electricity to charge your batteries
One song: BERLIN
Two versions: By USI ES and WHOLES.
Artist: USI ES
Who: The musical moniker of Belgian singer-songwriter Ester Weemaes. In her attic studio, she interweaves synths and samples with her distinctive, dark voice. Her music balances between darkness and dreaminess, feeling like a blanket wrapped around you: soft yet heavy, with frayed edges.
She released her emotive debut album SideQuest last February.
Usi Es‘s murder-ballad approach on Berlin has been inspired by the migration history
of her Moluccan family, via New Guinea to the Netherlands. Uprooted twice, each time
due to circumstances beyond their control.
TUTV: Her piano-touching version is a poignant, heart-rending and vulnerable one with
Es‘ near-whispering, film-noir voice upfront, joined by Wholes frontman Wolf Vanwymeersch‘ deep vocals on the spine-tingling twilight chorus. Horripilation in the dark.
Photo: Laurens Wille
Band: WHOLES
Who: Belgian raucous noise outfit led by musical chameleon Wolf Vanwymeersch,
who played with several bands before producing pop, rock post-punk and
sludge metal.
They released their dark-noise debut album A Mass In the Water.
Their Berlin delivery balances on the edge of collapse, “You’re Berlin on the border of
falling down / In a Swiss bank that has sold your life”, and sketches a world in which capitalist systems alienate us from one another while simultaneously cultivating a desire for more.
TUTV: Amps up, guitars up, gloom and doom up. The Apocalypse is just around the corner, and Wholes have obviously seen flashes of it. Their view on these collapsing times causes, by now familiar goosebumps reflections.