Estere’s music is a little hard to describe — imagine beat-based hip-hop drizzled in succulent R&B vocals on a bed of meaty bass and sprinkled with lush, chewy instrumentation and you still won’t have any idea what it actually sounds like. It’s an authentic expression of her self and no existing genre seemed to fit, so she coined her own: "electric blue witch-hop."
Her latest release, My Design, is available to stream on Bandcamp. "Lush, warm, and bouncy" are the words I keep coming back to when trying to describe My Design. It’s the perfect companion to soaking up nature on those relaxed summer days.
For My Design, Estere wanted to make a studio-quality recording at home, so she did.
"A lot of the preliminary work was going to other people’s recording studios and just asking them lots of questions," she explains.
"Taking lots of notes, getting recommendations and stuff for types of gear, monitors, interfaces, preamps, all that kind of thing.
"And then, slowly but surely, I built my own collection of things that I can adequately record on at home."
Despite being electronic, each sample hit on My Design comes directly from an interaction between Estere’s fingers and her MPC, an electronic instrument with big, touch sensitive pads for triggering sound samples.
She’s so close with her MPC that she has affectionately named it Lola. Working with an instrument is a special kind of relationship, and she considers Lola a partner in her songwriting process.
"Essentially, a lot of the time I’ll start with rhythms that I’ll play out on my MPC. Not always, but most of the time I’ll just be chilling with Lola and playing around with things until I get to the point that I like.
"I’ve gotten to know her and how she functions."
I’m sure the rapport she has with Lola contributes to the organic, lush sound on the album, or maybe they’re both expressions of the same artistic vision. Either way it makes me happy to see someone who isn’t a guitarist naming their instrument.
Translating electronic music to a live show is always an interesting challenge, but it sounds like Estere has got it covered.
"With my live shows I incorporate different performance elements to make it engaging for myself and for the audience as well," she explained.
"When I perform live I have Lola on stage as well as a whole bunch of different machines. I have a microkorg synthesizer, a TC Helicon vocal effect unit, live drums, they’re standing drums, which are quite ’80s, and I also have electric guitar.
"And just recently I’ve also added humans. So there’s two percussionists, one is playing live drums and one is playing kind of like a xylophone with a different bunch of samples and different percussion instruments.
"I think with electronic music, it’s about trying to figure out the parts that you can translate into live, and the stuff you want to keep programming."
So what should we expect from all this?
"You should expect to be transported into the realm of electric blue witch-hop ... Which is both something that you can dance to, but also be imaginative in."
For more from Fraser Thompson go to dunedinsound.com.
See it, hear it
• Estere at Morning Magpie Cafe, Friday, December 8, 8pm. $15. Listen: estere.bandcamp.com
