''Come Away with ESG'' is the 1983 debut album by American

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wale ...

band ESG. Released by

99 Records 99 Records was an American independent record label, active from 1980 to 1984. The label was home to musicians in the no wave, post-punk, post-disco, and avant-garde scenes in New York City. History British designer Gina Franklyn sold British fas ...

, the album incorporates songs from ESG's first EPs, '' ESG'' and ''ESG Says Dance to the Beat of Moody''. In conjunction with its 35th anniversary,

Fire Records Fire Records was an American independent record label, set up in 1959 by Bobby Robinson. Amongst others, it released records by Lightnin' Hopkins, Elmore James, Buster Brown and Arthur Crudup. At one point it was thought Fire had issued the l ...

reissued the album to glowing reception in 2018. ''Come Away''s critical resurgence has led it to be held in high esteem. It is regarded as a seminal work in

no wave No wave was an avant-garde music genre and visual art scene that emerged in the late 1970s in Downtown New York City. The term was a pun based on the rejection of commercial new wave music. Reacting against punk rock's recycling of rock and r ...

and

post-punk Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad genre of music that emerged in late 1977 in the wake of punk rock. Post-punk musicians departed from punk's fundamental elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a broader, more experiment ...

music, as well as a key influence for the development of

dance-punk Dance-punk (also known as disco-punk) is a post-punk subgenre that emerged in the late 1970s, and is closely associated with the disco, post-disco and new wave movements.Rip It Up and Start Again: Post Punk 1978-1984. Simon Reynolds.Faber an ...

and

hip hop Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hip- ...

music.

Background

Ed Bahlman discovered ESG while serving as the judge for a talent show and became the band's unofficial manager.Reynolds 2006, p. 272.

Tony Wilson Anthony Howard Wilson (20 February 1950 – 10 August 2007) was a British record label owner, radio and television presenter, nightclub manager and impresario, and a journalist for Granada Television, the BBC and Channel 4. As a co-founder ...

from

Factory Records Factory Records was a Manchester-based British independent record label founded in 1978 by Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus. The label featured several important acts on its roster, including Joy Division, New Order (band), New Order, A Certain Ra ...

approached the band after a performance at Hurrah on the

Upper West Side The Upper West Side (UWS) is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by Central Park on the east, the Hudson River on the west, West 59th Street to the south, and West 110th Street to the north. The Upper We ...

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

, and three days later they began recording with

Martin Hannett James Martin Hannett (31 May 1948 – 18 April 1991) was an English record producer, musician and an original partner/director at Tony Wilson's Factory Records. Hannett produced music by artists including Joy Division, the Durutti Column, A Cert ...

. The recordings helped bring Bahlman's focus to the band. He formed a partnership with Factory so that his

label could release ESG's eponymous debut EP in 1981. ''ESG'' was a

minimalist In visual arts, music, and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in the post-war era in western art. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post-mi ...

take on

funk Funk is a music genre that originated in African-American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African-Americans in the ...

music, removing brass, saxophone, and synthesizers to leave vocals, bass, and percussion. ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' placed ''ESG'' second on its list of the best EPs and cassettes of 1981, and ''

The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture publication based in Greenwich Village, New York City, known for being the country's first Alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, ...

'' placed the EP third on its

Pazz & Jop Pazz & Jop was an annual poll of top musical releases, compiled by American newspaper ''The Village Voice'' and created by music critic Robert Christgau. It published lists of the year's top releases for 1971 and, after Christgau's two-year abse ...

critics' poll. "Moody" was released off of ''ESG'' as the band's debut single. A

12-inch The twelve-inch single (often written as 12-inch or 12) is a type of vinyl (polyvinyl chloride or PVC) gramophone record that has wider groove spacing and shorter playing time with a "single" or a few related sound tracks on each surface, compar ...

remix single followed, and both versions found popularity at clubs in New York and London. Because of the single's release through Factory, many New York DJs assumed ESG was a London-based act.

Paradise Garage Paradise Garage, also known as "the Garage" or the "Gay-rage", was a New York City discotheque notable in the history of dance and pop music, as well as LGBT and nightclub cultures. The club was founded by sole proprietor Michael Brody, and ...

listed the song in its top 50 all-time tracks. It became a foundational track for the emerging

house music House is a genre of electronic dance music characterized by a repetitive Four on the floor (music), four-on-the-floor beat and a typical tempo of 115–130 beats per minute. It was created by DJs and music producers from Chicago's underground ...

scene. ESG released a second EP titled ''ESG Says Dance to the Beat of Moody'' in 1982. It includes "Dance" and "The Beat", which reappear on ''Come Away with ESG''. The EP placed ninth on that year's Pazz & Jop list. As several of its post-punk contemporaries were breaking up, the band continued to keep some amount of distance from the music business.

Composition

''Come Away'' has been stylistically aligned with the

avant-funk Avant-funk (also called mutant disco in the early 1980s) is a music style in which artists combine funk or disco rhythms with an avant-garde or art rock mentality. Its most prominent era occurred in the late 1970s and 1980s among post-punk and ...

, and

movements. '' Paste'' called its sound dub

disco Disco is a music genre, genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the late 1960s from the United States' urban nightclub, nightlife, particularly in African Americans, African-American, Italian-Americans, Italian-American, LGBTQ ...

with

punk Punk or punks may refer to: Genres, subculture, and related aspects * Punk rock, a music genre originating in the 1970s associated with various subgenres * Punk subculture, a subculture associated with punk rock, or aspects of the subculture s ...

's edge. ''

Resident Advisor ''Resident Advisor'' (also known as ''RA'') is an online music magazine and community platform established in 2001 and dedicated to showcasing electronic music, artists and events across the globe. Its editorial team provides news, music and ev ...

'' said it fused disco,

, and punk with

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

's flair.

Release and legacy

ESG recorded the rest of ''Come Away with ESG'' at

Radio City Music Hall Radio City Music Hall (also known as Radio City) is an entertainment venue and Theater (structure), theater at 1260 Sixth Avenue (Manhattan), Avenue of the Americas, within Rockefeller Center, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York C ...

in 1983 and released the album through 99 Records later that year. The band's first performance after the release was at

Danceteria Danceteria was a nightclub that operated in New York City from May 1980 until 1986 and in the Hamptons until 1995. The club operated in various locations over the years, a total of three in New York City and four in the Hamptons. The most famous l ...

. Around half of the tracks on the album are instrumentals. The songs that do include vocals focus on danceable chants. Shortly after the release of ''Come Away with ESG'', the band became inactive for several years, in part because of the closure of 99 Records. Decades after its release, ''Come Away with ESG'' saw a critical resurgence. It was named the 84th greatest album of the 1980s by ''

Pitchfork A pitchfork or hay fork is an agricultural tool used to pitch loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. It has a long handle and usually two to five thin tines designed to efficiently move such materials. The term is also applie ...

''. The album became influential for post-punk,

dance Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

, and

acts.

Kathleen Hanna Kathleen Hanna (born November 12, 1968) is an American singer, musician and pioneer of the feminist punk riot grrrl movement, and punk zine writer. She is the lead singer of feminist punk band Bikini Kill and fronted the electropunk band Le Tigre ...

stated that it influenced her work with

Le Tigre Le Tigre (, ; French for "The Tiger") is an American art punk and riot grrrl band formed by Kathleen Hanna (of Bikini Kill), Johanna Fateman and Sadie Benning in 1998 in New York City. Benning left in 2000 and was replaced by JD Samson. ...

Royal Trux Royal Trux was an American alternative rock band active from 1987 to 2001, and again from 2015 to 2019 consisting of Neil Hagerty (vocals, guitar) and Jennifer Herrema (vocals). History While still a teenager, Hagerty joined Washington D.C. g ...

member

Jennifer Herrema Jennifer James Herrema is an American rock music singer-songwriter, record producer, artist, and model best known for her work as one half of the rock band Royal Trux. Career Herrema formed Royal Trux with her partner Neil Hagerty and lived w ...

has also cited ''Come Away with ESG'' as an influence.

NPR Music NPR Music is a project of National Public Radio, an American privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization, that launched in November 2007 to present public radio music programming and original editorial content for music ...

dubbed the songs "prescient" for their time. They also felt ''Come Away'' proved disparate sounds like Latin funk and post-punk could be fused successfully. ''

PopMatters ''PopMatters'' is an international online magazine of cultural criticism that covers aspects of popular culture. ''PopMatters'' publishes reviews, interviews, and essays on cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, ...

'' argued that "all funky rock music was chasing after 'Come Away'' after 1983, the year of its release. ''Treble'' ranked the album #23 on their list of post-punk's best albums. They claimed the album cemented ESG's legacy in the early '80s

scene. The band's "buzzy ndrug-cutting" rhythms were seen for being essential to NYC

's future generation. ''

Chicago Reader The ''Chicago Reader'', or ''Reader'' (stylized as ЯEADER), is an American alternative newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. The ''Reader'' has been ...

'' echoed this, seeing their "stark" genre fusion trickle into the scene's 2000s bands like Liars and the Rapture. ''

'' called it "an essential dance music blueprint", noting that its "party chants" prefigured aspects of

. '' Paste'' wrote that

G-funk G-funk, short for gangsta funk, (or funk rap) is a sub-genre of gangsta rap that emerged from the West Coast scene in the early 1990s. The genre is heavily influenced by the synthesizer-heavy 1970s funk sound of Parliament-Funkadelic (aka P-F ...

, a form of

gangsta rap Gangsta rap or gangster rap, initially called reality rap, is a subgenre of rap music that conveys the culture, values, and experiences of urban gangs and street hustlers, frequently discussing unpleasant realities of the world in general th ...

started in the late '80s, was anticipated through "About You"s "eerily twisting"

synth A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis a ...

Accolades

Track listing

All songs written by ESG. # "Come Away" – 3:15 # "Dance" – 4:32 # "You Make No Sense" – 2:20 # "Parking Lot Blues" – 2:53 # "Chistelle" – 1:54 # "About You" – 2:05 # "It's Alright" – 2:38 # "Moody (Spaced Out)" – 4:18 # "Tiny Sticks" – 3:02 # "The Beat" – 2:17 # "My Love for You" – 2:54

Personnel

Credits adapted from ''Come Away with ESG'' liner notes. ;ESG * Renee Scroggins – lead vocals, guitar * Deborah Scroggins – bass, backing vocals * Marie Scroggins – congas, backing vocals * Valerie Scroggins – drums, backing vocals ;Additional musicians * Tito Libran – congas ;Production * Ed Bahlman – production * Howie Weinberg – mastering * Don Hünerberg – engineering

Notes

References

* * *

External links

* {{Authority control 1983 debut albums 99 Records albums ESG (band) albums Fire Records (UK) albums