We will be the guests of radio entertainer Haffi Haff on Icelandic radio station FM957 tomorrow (Thursday 25th) night at 10pm (Icelandic time). The show will be in English and will feature extracts from our “Prelude” EP as well as an exclusive acoustic version of one of our songs, that you’ve never heard before!

 

Not in Iceland? That’s ok, you can listen to the radio station live on www.fm957.is! (press “hlusta live”)

As said before, no worries about the scary Icelandic language, the show will be mostly in English

All our best,

The Esoteric Gender

 
We are now barely recovering from days and days of intense rehearsing to try and give our best for the Reykjavik Gay Pride festival this year. It was by far our biggest performance ever, and we wanted it to be perfect. At least, we certainly had fun, and hope the audience did as well! We can only give a warm thank you to the team organizing this event, they have been wonderful to us, a great technical and human support. Here’s a video taken during our set for those who missed it, hope you enjoy it!

 


 
We have some more surprises to announce very soon, so stay tuned! And thank you to all those who came to see us during Gay Pride, whether it’d be on the big stage or at Sódóma, it certainly was an unforgettable day!

 
JC

You might have noticed on our Facebook page that we have had a lot going on these past few months, it’s all very exciting. First of all, Iceland Airwaves went fantastically well. We played twice and had good feedback both times, so thank you Airwaves, and thank you to the Reykjavik Downtown Hostel for welcoming us in their amazing off-venue line-up. Dazed & Confused selected us as one of their favorite acts during Airwaves, which meant a lot to us. We gave a short interview to them which you can find on their website. We’ve also just uploaded some photos from our gig in the photo section, check them out!



We also had the honour of being part of the NASA Halloween party organized by the fabulous Haffi Haff. Again, a lot of fun, and a great energy coming from the audience. Certainly one of our most memorable gigs.



Now we look forward to playing next Friday at Venue with one of our favorite bands in Iceland, Worm is Green. Hopefully a night to remember, again!



The album is slowly coming together. We have agreed on a title and a tracklist, more info on that to come. We’ll keep you updated on a release date, but it will definitely be coming in the next few weeks. We are very much looking forward to hearing your feedback on this debut, we have put a lot of effort into it and we know it will be a great reward just to see it finally come to life!



Take care,
The Esoteric Gender

Lots happening these last few weeks. We haven’t exactly been very efficient when it comes to keeping you updated and we are sorry about that. We have been very busy trying to reorganize a few things.

Starting with the bad news, you may have read here and there that Sellaband went bankrupt and that a new team took over the company. First of all, we were relieved to see that the website was saved, and really hope for the best, for all the artists and believers who decided to give it a chance. It is sadly not our case, for several reasons, the main one being that it is from now on impossible to take your money out of Sellaband once two weeks have passed from the day of your investment. While we fully understand why the new team had to make that decision, we cannot resolve ourselves to agreeing with this, and cannot ask our fans to be “stuck” on Sellaband even if things do not work out there for us.
So, if you believed in us there and you have not received/seen our email, please remove your parts from our account and get your money back (or reinvest it in another band, up to you!). We will soon definitely leave Sellaband.

The good news is that we spent a few days last week recording some of our songs at the lovely Sundlaugin studios in the suburbs of Reykjavik.

[Show as slideshow]

We have already started mixing them and hope to release an EP out of these sessions before the summer. We will of course let you know as soon as we have more information concerning a release date. It is currently going really well, we are having a lot of fun working on these tracks, rearranging, recording and remixing them and hoping to get some really good music out there, at last!

We are also rehearsing a lot, working on new arrangements and are very eager to get back on stage. It’s been too long!

Best,
The Esoteric Gender

It’s been a while! But despite our semi-absence from the web, we have been rather busy planning ahead. We have started composing new material, we won placement on a Sellaband compilation (to be released soon) as being one of the 10 most successful bands on the website for December 2009, our budget has thus seen a great increase. Happy news, in other terms! Thank you all for your great support!

After a two months break from rehearsing, we finally started playing again together, and we have had a blast! Here’s a little peak at our latest sessions:

We have also been busy remixing for other Icelandic bands in the past few weeks. Follow Worm is Green for the release of their next EP, « Around the fire », in April, it will feature a remix by The Esoteric Gender. We are also currently working on two remixes for Bloodgroup. It has been going well, we cannot wait for you to hear them!

Meanwhile, thanks again for the great support! Looking forward to meeting you again soon for a new concert!

Best,
Lisa and JC

The article which was published on November 14th, covered our recent win on the SEAT online song competition. You can see the article online here:

http://www.visir.is/article/2009753261313

In English…

“A band of intellectuals who met in Iceland

The intellectual band The Esoteric Gender just won an international competition held on the Internet. The band is composed of foreign students from the University of Iceland and a university lecturer.

“It was a big surprise for us. We didn’t expect to win this at all,” says singer Lisa Jamesdaughter from Manchester. The band, who plays spell-binding electro-pop, won with their song Pretty Muted Blue. The competition is called SEAT and the Sellaband.com members can vote for one of the ten songs that are nominated each month. The bands that win are then sponsored towards their album budget. The website users can themselves sponsor the album and get in exchange part of the benefits taken from the sales.

Lisa moved to Iceland in 2003 after having graduated as a sound engineer from Beatles’ Paul McCartney’s art school in Liverpool. She registered for a course in Creative Writing at the University of Iceland where she met Frenchman Jean-Christophe Salaün. Together, they formed the band The Esoteric Gender and shortly later joined drummer Thomas Brorsen Smidt, who studies a Master’s degree in gender studies. “Our first concert was in Café Rosenberg. We needed a big drum that was lent to us by Egill Ólafsson. I was told to go and knock on the door of this house but did not imagine he was actually living there. Suddenly this guy from the Stuðmenn opens the door, he was very friendly and lent us the drum,” says Lisa.

One extra member joined the band later on, it was Gabriel Malenfant, from Quebec in Canada, who teaches philosophy at the University of Iceland. “He was our teacher at university and we found out that he was a guitarist as well. It’s quite funny that he would teach at University and now be part of our band.” It was later on that recording and sound engineer Tony Platt, whom Lisa met at McCartney’s school, encouraged them to take part in this Internet competition. He has recorded performers like The Who, Led Zeppelin, Wings, AC/DC, Metallica and Bob Marley.

The Esoteric Gender is thus quite an intellectual band. When asked whether their studies were mirrored in their music, Lisa answers they certainly have things to say. “Our newest song is about what kind of influence literature has upon us, and we sing also a lot about gender questions. Some texts can sometimes come across as quite feminist, but not always. I wrote a text for example about how women are capable of killing men emotionally,” she says and laughs.

The band is based in Iceland and is considered to be Icelandic even though all members are foreign. “Reykjavik is a very practical place for us as a band and there is a good international community here. We see ourselves as an Icelandic band because we created it here and get a lot of inspiration from our environment,” says Lisa.”

http://www.sellaband.com/news/98-the-esoteric-gender-wins-seat-competition

We are of course thrilled to get some publicity, especially from the SEAT and Sellaband websites, and are extremely grateful to all of the people who voted for us, especially our friends and fans on Facebook!
We don’t have the exact statistics but were told that we ‘left the competition far behind!’

As a result of winning the SEAT competition we are now in 14th place for the Christmas competition. We thought that perhaps getting into the top ten and getting one of our songs on a compilation CD was something worth pursuing. Therefore we are now trying to get a few more investors to buy some parts for our fundraising campaign. As a reward for those who invest before the 24th December we are offering a new remix of one of our songs which investors/believers will be able to download on Christmas day.

If you would like to help us win then go to the link below and click on the big red ‘FUND THIS ARTIST’ button

http://www.sellaband.com/projects/theesotericgender

Thanks again everyone!

Best,
Lisa and J.C

If you’re not really touched by the Christmas spirit, maybe you will find in Ljósvaki’s music some comfort to face the winter. Ljósvaki is a relatively new comer on the Icelandic scene. I discovered him at the Reykjavik Downtown Hostel during Airwaves (where we played as well), and what a nice surprise it was! Beautiful music, great arrangements and voice, positive and uplifting. It is truly refreshing. You can find out more about him on his website.

If I talk about him, it’s also because he will be the warm-up act at our next gig, at Batteríið (Hafnarstræti 3-5, 101 Reykjavík, former Organ for those who were more familiar with the old place), on December 1st. For those of you who are in town, don’t miss it! He’s great live, and if you haven’t seen us on stage yet… now is the time to catch up. It’s going to be a lot of fun, and free of charge. Isn’t that a good news?

Hope many of you will make it.

Best,

JC