At last years Hopscotch Music Festival Slyvan Esso played the largest stage at the festival at the seated Memorial Auditorium, the crown jewel of North Carolina performing arts. Just months before they were playing the much more intimate triangle venue The Cave in Chapel Hill, better suited to their electronic style of music. While their show at Hopscotch didn’t even come close to filling up the Memorial Auditorium (neither did Local Natives), they brought the room to life with fans crowding to the stage as the bass thumped harder than I’ve ever heard and Amelia Meath and her tall custom sneakers and Nick Sanborn controlling everyone’s dance moves.
In the video for “Coffee” they show off some of the live energy that they have as performers with a type of music that can be hard to perform to in a live setting. Sanborn feels it behind the laptop, twisting and turning knobs with full control of every little sound. After releasing single after single the duo has a debut self titled full length album set to release May 13.
Sylvan Esso are currently based out of Durham, NC where Sanborn, also the bass player of Megafaun, wrote and recorded the material in his bedroom. The duo started when Sanborn took on “Play it Right”, a song Meath wrote and performed with her folk trio Mountain Man, remixing the song into something greater than either of them had created. Each song they’ve released seems to top the next, with melodies that flow seamlessly with electronic tones that aren’t overbearing.
