Paint - "Esuna"

 Way back in Aught 7, when Jeff was known as "Paint," he wrote a little album called Esuna. This is it's story. 

Esuna represents a time when I was still finding my footing as a musician and a writer. I had given up on songwriting for a few years at the time, thinking that my future was leading me down other pathways. I was studying Art History, and though I loved it, I was starting to feel foggy and empty, always writing about other people's work and never producing anything creative myself. For me, Esuna represented a taking back of a past from which I had cut myself away, deliberately or passively. 

Esuna takes it's name from a staple spell from the video game series, Final Fantasy. In these games, you can cure all the negative spells effecting your characters, such as "slow," "poison," "blindness," by casting "esuna." For me, writing the album was a metaphorical wiping away of the spells telling me I couldn't do it; an unlearning of the things I learned that kept me from music. 

The songwriting is flawed, the recording, abysmal, but there are a few things I am proud of. My favorite is "La Fin d'Octobre," a waltz sung in French about a guy who is being haunted by his dead lover, who visits him in his dreams, but only if he drinks enough du vin. Fans of The Blamers will be interested to hear an early and zygote-like version of "Summersong," which has become a live staple for the band. Other stand-outs are the tribal opener, "Incantation," a dark and wickedly morbid duet with Future Pat called "The Magic Number," and "All out War," a blues song about the spirit of war personified as a red-haired and ultra-violent beauty (à la Neil Gaiman). 

Anyway, give it a listen if you feel so inclined. Sometimes, its nice to remember where one comes from. 

http://www.mediafire.com/file/nz0zhnmuktm/Esuna.zip