Esmerine is an experimental

Experimental music

Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...

 instrumental group started by Bruce Cawdron and Beckie Foon, who have contributed to other Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

-based bands as Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Godspeed You! Black Emperor is a Canadian post-rock band which originated from Montreal, Quebec in 1994...

, Set Fire to Flames

Set Fire to Flames

Set Fire to Flames is a post-rock band of thirteen musicians from Montreal, Canada, who have released two albums on Alien8 Recordings, FatCat Records....

, and Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band. Beckie and Bruce met in 2001 while working on the first Set Fire to Flames record in Montreal.

Esmerine's music consists mainly of percussion

Percussion instrument

A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...

, cello

Cello

The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

, and marimba

Marimba

The marimba is a musical instrument in the percussion family. It consists of a set of wooden keys or bars with resonators. The bars are struck with mallets to produce musical tones. The keys are arranged as those of a piano, with the accidentals raised vertically and overlapping the natural keys ...

, lacking the guitars present in other Godspeed side-projects. Esmerine's style shares many characteristics with minimalist

Minimalism

Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...

 classical music and chamber music

Chamber music

Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

.

Esmerine will be touring La Lechuza, the band's most recent release, in europe in Fall 2011.

Releases

• If Only a Sweet Surrender to the Nights to Come Be True
  If Only a Sweet Surrender to the Nights to Come Be True
  If Only a Sweet Surrender to the Nights to Come Be True is the debut album by Esmerine. It was released on June 2, 2003..- Track listing :# Red Fire Farm - 4:33# There Were No Footprints in the Dust Behind Them.....
  
  , Madrona/Resonant, 2003
• Aurora
  Aurora (Esmerine album)
  Aurora is the second album of post-rock band Esmerine. It was released by Madrona Records in 2005.-Track listing:# "Quelques Mots Pleins d'Ombre" – 7:22# "Histories Repeating as One Thousand Hearts Mend" – 16:47# "Mados" – 2:34...
  
  , Madrona, 2005
• La Lechuza, Constellation, 2011

External links

• Official Website
• Constellation Records
• Madrona Records