At some point you have to do it...
Okay, I have to do it at some point, so here are some reviews of 'The Sea & the Silence', newest first :
www.amodelofcontrol.com/reviews/
www.side-line.com/reviews_comments.php
www.gothtronic.com/
www.reflectionsofdarkness.com/index.php
..and this is taken from the French digital fanzine www.axesscode.com, translated into English (you'll just have to trust me ;-)
''Although numerous techno industrial projects pushed the genre further than a simple "nodding-head machine" like those stupid dog puppets found on the back of cars, nobody went as far as ESA did. The apparent simplicity of his music hardly defines the power that comes out of it. Anyone lucky enough to have listened to The Sea & The Silence will struggle to put words on his experience apart from a: "it blows me away". We try in vain to understand its mechanisms only to see for ourselves the crushing effects of this electronic substance.
Of course we can dissect the techniques. We realise then that the rhythms linearity gives a wrong impression as they evolve perpetually while staying true to the spirit of the original pattern. The beat escalates and gets more complex without ever losing any substance. I am not even mentioning his "cut science" or mastered use of effects to give life to the beast or his constant atmospheric changes and the incorporation of the singing. From digital hardcore to dark-folk, he brings to some tracks the efficiency of a pop song, which chorus we will hum. He also uses judicious tricks such as sounds inversion, musical instruments swapping their rhythms so that everything changes although nothing does. At every listening, you will try to navigate through the broth of this alchemy and at each time, you will fall over board trying to understand.
And you will be swallowed up by this wild sea, tossed about by the flood tide and the ebb tide of the waves. You will be sucked in, touching the bottom of the seabed, caught in the silence of the depths and then resurface, deafened by the heave crashing against the reef. The Silence will then come to offer you a makeshift raft on which you will catch your breath a bit before the next breaker. Soon you realise that you don't stand a chance against the vast ocean. Soon, worn out, the mermaids singing will captivate you. You will now sink while contemplating the stormy and twinkling surface fade away. And you will let out your last sigh in a ballet of twirling bubbles. You're quite right, I could have said as well that the latest ESA literally "blew me away".