QARIAQ
Bristol-based concept artist dips her toe into the sparkling world of post-rock.
“It was amazIng; I still can’t get my head around it!” Esther CG, aka qariaq, is in awe that she made her live debut at this year’s ArcTanGent Festival.“I’ve been going every year for the last six years and a lot of that scene has really influenced me. As soon as I go into that field, it feels like I’m home.”
Just a few years ago this self-taught former member of the WorldRoots youth choir was too shy to share her experimental bedroom recordings with the outside world, but things have changed. In 2018, she cautiously began uploading audio extracts to social media and they quickly caught the attention of festival bookers and fellow musicians. She’s just released her first EP, lumber limbs, which showcases her haunting and often unsettling style through four immersive songs, including the drone-driven made by walking, the Plini-esque title track and the upside-down jazz of follicle full.
“I wanted one track to be soothing and another where the guitar line is panned so it purposefully sounds really wonky. I wanted people to feel a little thrown off by it,” she reveals. “I used to suffer quite badly with anxiety and some of the physical sensations I would get made me feel unsteady, so I like that music can almost imitate that. I like the idea of being able to change the way someone feels through sound.”
Although lumber limbs is produced by Lambhorn conspirator Paul Stallan and includes guest drummers Ollie Cocup (Stanlaey/My Octopus Mind) and Dan Johnson from Run Logan Run, qariaq is ultimately a solo project.
This is reflected in Esther CG’s live set-up of an electric baritone guitar, an African thumb piano (called a kalimba) and a stack of pedals.
“I listen to a lot of artists who experiment with different time signatures and go against the idea of traditional Western songwriting,” she says. “I think Imogen Heap and Jo Quail are amazing, and I saw a really interesting band the other week called DakhaBrakha who are Ukrainian; their complicated rhythms are hauntingly beautiful.
I listen to a lot of African rhythm music too.”
Teasing twisted melodies isn’t the musician’s only creative outlet. She has a degree in art and one of her abstract paintings graces the cover of her EP.
“I think there are parallels between my art and my music,” she says. “I want to transport people with the distortion of sounds; I like the element of repetition and the subtlety of details forming a bigger picture. With my artwork, I’m working towards doing larger scale pieces that are ultimately abstract pictures.
I like people to tell me what they see in them and I like that element in my music as well.”
It’s still early days for the artist, whose name is taken from the West Greenlandic word for a water bubble in the ice, but with the excitement of her live debut still fresh, qariaq is looking towards the future with more gigs just over the horizon. nRs
“I LIKE THE IDEA OF BEING ABLE TO CHANGE THE WAY SOMEONE FEELS THROUGH SOUND.”