Bleep

Originally released in 1995 and achieving cult classic status in the years since, Mars Is A Ten is the debut album from ESP Summer, an elegant meeting of minds between Ian Summers of Pale Saints and Warren Defever of the ever changing His Name Is Alive. The Defever/Disciples partnership has proved incredibly fruitful since it began in 2019, originally tapped for a trilogy of guitar-led ambient home recordings from the 80s and expanding with weightless mixtapes, beatscape versions, and hazy hip-hop dubs.

Around the time of HNIA’s 1996 album Stars On E.S.P., Defever darted across a myriad of labels with limited tapes and EPs as ESP Beetles and ESP Family, but it was ESP Summer that would stick for the longest, revived in 2020 with the “epic, psych-damaged” tape disintegrations of 天国の王国 (Kingdom Of Heaven). Mars Is A Ten is far more naked, with Masters’ vocals soft like a warm breeze as the duo coax a multitude of emotions out of a set of deceptively simple arrangements.

‘Sticky Sun’ opens with chirping tape sounds and guitars marking the sunrise, piano meshing with bass plucks that roll into the beachy solitude of ‘Web Of Dream’. Circular guitar plucks and reverent harmonies wind through ‘Simple Eye’, gently growling as the band muses on mortality. ‘More Water’ adds a gothic tension as icy, solitary piano keys are backed by eerie clockwork plucks, while the patiently marching strums of ‘On You’ frame faint calls from a great distance. ‘Splinters’ is perhaps the most deft display of guitar here, with the crisp sound of nails on nylon punctuating each strum as shimmering guitars dance around each other.

Rescued from the vaults, Mars Is A Ten explores psychedelic pop and folk palettes from Warren Defever and Ian Masters.