For Your Ears Archive

Shany Kedar and Benjamin Esterlis met at a record store in Jerusalem in early 2005. After exchanging some gifts from each other’s personal music collection, Shany, then a young graphic design student and novice musician, asked Benjamin, an established Israeli indie electronic musician releasing music under the pseudonym Morphlexis, if he would help her produce her first album. He obliged.

Kedar’s debut, Bloodlines came out in 2006 receiving fine reviews within and outside of Israel, marking Kedar as one of the promising new voices of the local indie scene and more importantly – establishing the formation of an extraordinary musical bond.

Over the next few years Kedar and Esterlis went on collaborating on various live shows and small projects. In 2009, Esterlis formed We Are Ghosts, and asked Kedar to join along. We Are Ghosts is a musical experiment intended to document music in the making, without any pre-written materials. As of today, the collective has released 7 sessions recorded in various strange locations and aroused curiosity amongst audiences and critics alike.

In continuum with the spontaneous and free spirited approach to making music that was established while working with the relatively large collective that is We Are Ghosts, “Comfort You – Songs by Other People” marks a more intimate effort. Recorded within 24 hours and mixed after a couple of days, the short album presents a touching interpretation of old forgotten songs by musical legends such as Freddy Mercury, Bill Withers, Elvis Presley and Billie Holiday, while maintaining a fresh and minimalist point of view. The album combines sounds of instruments like glockenspiel and melodica with retro musical toys such as an old Casio keyboard, a toy vocal manipulator/distorter and children’s percussions along side with acoustic guitars and bass.

You can download the album, free of charge at sk-be.bandcamp.com.