WOM Features – Esben & The Witch – “A Kaldeidoscope” Exclusive Premiere

“Everything’s changed and nothing’s changed,” says vocalist Rachel Davies of their sixth album, Hold Sacred. “This kernel is the purest essence of Esben and the Witch since our inception.” It’s a product of the trio’s deeply important, 14-year-spanning friendship. Together, they shut themselves away to plunge into and search for solace in the depths of exhaustion, depression, anxiety, existential fear – and all beginning long before the world shut down and changed irrevocably.

“A group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope. This song felt like something being born, a creature opening its eyes for the first time, innocently seeing the world and how beautiful it can be. A butterfly doesn’t live for long, a fleeting dream, soaking up the beautiful things,” the band explain. “We wanted the song and the video to capture this spirit. The hazy, psychedelic warmth of summer. The vivid colours of the meadows and the thrum of activity within.” The song describes a rebirth – finding peace in the beauty of change and growth

Hold Sacred‘s stripped back sonics are essential to the songs, letting atmosphere linger and steep, and creating space for Davies’ emotive vocals and storytelling. Though a brave departure from the grand, rock-based songwriting they’d steadily built up across prior albums, it offers the same intensity and passion via a different channel; the songs creep in and envelop you quietly but wholly.

Esben and the Witch – comprising Rachel Davies, Thomas Fisher and Daniel Copeman – began in Brighton in 2008, later decamped to Berlin, and is now split three ways across the UK, Germany and the US. Their winding geographical journey feels representative of their path as a whole. The band have snaked through various scenes and sonic worlds across their 14 years together, while always squirming away from an easy genre classification.

“I feel proud of us for staying strong as a trio, as a weird little family that has managed to create something out of the darkness that hopefully shimmers, like a crystal in the mud,” says Davies. “I am proud of not giving up, of maintaining our integrity throughout. This is the sound of three people who love and support each other, navigating the ever present figure of the black dog; and if we can provide help or solace for anyone else, also haunted, then that is value enough.”

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