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–To be released on cassette and digitally on May 27th, 2025. C34 –

brown swirl tape with black imprints. Tape packaging includes a 2-sided 3-panel J-Card with artwork by HausMo Max.  This is the catalog page with album information and artwork. To purchase, head to our Bandcamp page.

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Kingston, NY-based composer / vocalist / producer Weston Minissali makes music under the moniker Erica Eso. Minissali has participated in New York’s music scene for more than a decade as a member of projects like avant-rock post-pop band Cloud Becomes Your Hand (Northern Spy, Feeding Tube) and chimeric musique concrète experimentalists VaVatican (NNA Tapes). Minissali’s work as Erica Eso injects strategies associated with the electronic avant-garde, including microtonal note voicings and advanced synthesis, into ornate compositions shaped in the idiom of art pop and focused on the keyboard as a primary instrument. Since forming in 2015, Erica Eso has shifted through diverse personnel configurations for live performances and their studio recordings released with NNA Tapes and Ramp Local, before settling into a quintet for their Hausu Mountain debut 192 (HAUSMO124, 2022). For his new album Songs In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand, Minissali approached composition as a solo process, honing in on the granular details of his own songwriting and electronic production. Bolstered by the experience gained over the years he spent experimenting in his elaborate self-constructed home studio, Minissali sought to tie his artistic practice holistically into his daily life, cutting away inessentials and focusing inward both in sound and in lived experience. Songs In My Pocket offers us Minissali’s most adventurous songwriting and his most ornate production to date, pushing the Erica Eso project into new realms of complexity characterized by complete freedom in electronic arrangement. What once could have been called “DIY bedroom pop” now showcases Minissali’s time-earned studio expertise, brought to life by what he describes as “a much better (but still limited) understanding of just how expansive a studio-based process can be.”

Minissali has always focused on fine-grain synthesis for his work as Erica Eso, reaching beyond the traditional twelve-tone temperament into microtonal territory that imbues his work with an otherworldly character and an unpredictable harmonic sophistication. Songs In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand surrounds Minissali’s clarion vocal performances with a teeming network of bespoke electronic voices, shedding instruments associated with rock music to zoom in on the details of his synth, sampling and sequencer performances. Whirring oscillators, languid chordal pads that melt from note to note, and bursts of non-recursive electronic drums played on a MIDI sequencer sit front and center in the mix, possessing enough specificity of tone to make it seem like we’re peering at them through an aural magnifying glass. With such an atypical palette of synths and electronic drums as the central elements animating his songs, Minissali’s vocals at once detach themselves from easily legible harmonic signposts and land more directly than ever before. We trace every nuance of his topline melodies as they cascade into dynamic arcs that show off his range as a vocalist and the emotional weight that he can wring from vibrato. Vocal harmonies weave throughout the record: most tracks feature Toronto luminaries Alex Samaras, and Robin Dann (Bernice), with one cameo from LA’s Lina Tullgren. The backing vocals swarm around the lead voice in moments that instantly heighten the drama, beckoning towards some future incarnation of pop or R&B. Minissali used the free-form yet still resolutely in-the-pocket rhythms featured on “Yolk,” one track from 192, as what he calls a guiding light for the dynamic drum machine performances that animate Songs In My Pocket. Kick drums and snare hits skitter around the corners of the mix, locking into looping grooves for a few moments or jettisoning into one-off fills that evade easy patterns of recursion.

In talking about the compositional mindset that birthed Songs In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand, Minissali describes a deliberate move away from the bombast of full-band arrangement and the intensity of rock music towards what he describes as a “clear, stripped down, austere aesthetic.” With more room to breathe granted to both his voice and his relatively small sound palette, every decision carries weight and demands close scrutiny — testifying to his confidence as a composer and vocalist and his overall shift from considering instruments as primary compositional tools towards considering the studio itself as the nexus of creativity. Minissali remembers drawing inspiration from Japanese calligraphy, whose forms sparked drum machines in his head. “Looking at these simple, plain brush strokes, I’d ask myself ‘how do I make a drum machine sound like this looks?’” Songs In My Pocket gives us the answer, not only in its drum performances but in every facet of its composition. The album’s general paring away of unnecessary elements to achieve a state of austerity mirrors changes in Minissali’s personal life: getting married, devoting himself to formal Zen Buddhist practice, moving from New York City back to the Hudson Valley where he grew up, and getting back in touch with two beloved mountain ranges, the Catskills and the Shawangunks. We hear the sound of these points of reconnection, a holistic recentering that pulls Minissali inward, all while his songs and his studio practice continue to expand beyond any limits.