Esthesis announce second album Watching Worlds Collide

(Image credit: Press)

French prog rockers Esthesis have announced that they wlll release their second album, When Worlds Collide, on August 19.

The band, who won the Best Unsigned Band category in the 2020 Prog Magazine Readers' Poll, released their debut album The Awakening the same year.

"This second album is less ambient than The Awakening," Esthesis mainman Aurélien Goude explains. "From the beginning, I wanted a very different record, complementary to my previous work. The sound of this album is more 'in your face', more modern with electro elements. Leprous, Rammstein and Massive Attack inspired me a little on some textures of keyboards and voices.

"The album is quite jazzy too, with a fantastic brass trio playing on several tracks. The cinematic aspect is once again very important in this Esthesis album. It’s very film noir.

"The use of brass elements was inspired by composers like John Barry. I'm a big fan of his work for James Bond movies, like Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. When I was a child, I listened to this music over and over! It's clearly one of the major inspirations of the album for me, just like Goldfrapp and Talk Talk once again.

"I completely agree with artists who wanted to evolve throughout their careers like David Bowie, Thom Yorke, Kate Bush, Steven Wilson or Talk Talk. I will continue to do the same with Esthesis. The third album, which I have already started, will once again be very different, much more electro and industrial, a bit like Bjork, Portishead and Nine Inch Nails."

Esthesis recently released their very first video for Place Your Bets. You can see the new artwork for When Worlds Collide below.

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.