New e.s.t. studio album to be released at the end of March

Awesome news from B.H. Hopper Management: A new e.s.t. studio album, "301," with all-original, never-before-released compositions, will be in stores on March 30, 2012 worldwide.

The press release:

In January 2007 e.s.t. were on tour in Asia and Australia performing shows in Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, Jakarta, Perth and Sydney. It was their third tour of Japan and their second time on the fifth continent and the venues and audiences had become noticeably bigger. Only a few weeks before they had finished their triumphant tour of Germany performing their now legendary “Live in Hamburg” concert (awarded ‘Album of the Decade’ by the London TIMES). It was undoubtedly the prime time of the style defining jazz band of the Noughties.

Esbjörn Svensson, Magnus Öström and Dan Berglund decided to rent the famous Studio 301 in Sydney for their off-days in the middle of the Australian tour and jammed for two consecutive days to develop new songs and material. Altogether they recorded 9 hours of music. “Leucocyte” became the first release from this recording and has been praised by critics and fans alike as a ground-breaking work that leads into a new musical universe. 

Very soon after the recording Esbjörn Svensson had edited much of the material down to two albums. And so the plan at the time was to release either a double album or two consecutive albums from this recording. The untimely passing of Esbjörn Svensson then disrupted this undertaking and only one of the albums, “Leucocyte”, was released at the time. 

The fan community has been longing for access to archival material and recordings ever since. So three years on, in October and November 2011, Dan Berglund and Magnus Öström revisited the material from that recording and together with their regular sound engineer Ake Linton made their own edit for an album which is now called ‘301’ and which will be released on March 30, 2012 worldwide. It contains all original e.s.t. compositions that have never been heard before !!

Svensson perished in a diving accident in June, 2008.  "Leucocyte" was released in September of that year.  Both Berglund and Öström have since released CDs of their own; Berglund's "Tonbruket" (2010) and "Dig It to the End" (2011), Öström's "Thread of Life" (2011).

Writing yesterday about "301" for the UK's Jazzwise, Jon Newey noted, "The news of its release is set to create a huge buzz in the jazz world where the group left a vast vacuum still to be filled. Word from EST's manager, Burkhard Hopper, suggests '301' falls between the experimentalism of 'Leucocyte' and the classic EST sound of 2007's 'Live in Hamburg,' which was voted in Jazzwise's top three jazz albums of that year and as album of the decade by The Times. Reasons to be very cheerful amidst a month of escalating gloom."