“I like that it can't be pigeonholed,” says Lev Ceylan of Ebbb’s genre-eschewing debut EP, All At Once. “We really do love plot twists – where it just explodes into something completely different.”
Despite being together for barely a year, the band (comprised of producer Ceylan and vocalist Will Rowland, with added live drummer Scott MacDonald) have already landed on something truly singular. Fusing pulsing rhythms, immersive electronic production, sparkling melodies, layered vocal harmonies and beats that veer from ambient to industrial, the result is an idiosyncratic hybrid of sounds. One that the group describes as “Brian Wilson meets Death Grips.”
The three all met through playing in previous bands and sharing stages, while remaining friends. Ceylan had never forgotten Rowland’s unique and soaring voice and so when he began making some solo electronic productions, he knew who he wanted to sing on top of them. Rowland’s background in attending Westminster Abbey Choir School means he’s a vocalist with a range, ability and versatility that few others possess. “I loved it at the school and I think all of the melody writing I do now and everything that we're doing, even on a subconscious level, is impacted by that,” Rowland says.
When the pair started working together, there was an immediate connection and an ability to go beyond where had been possible before. “By having Will’s voice it’s like you're not trying to imitate extremes,” Ceylan says of the production process. “If you have an idea, you can actually execute it to its full extent.” And in turn, Rowland was soon having to adapt his voice in new ways to shape around Ceylan’s distinct compositions. “In any band scenario that I've been in before as the singer, I haven't pushed myself to nearly the same degree,” Rowland says. “Ebbb has pushed me to new heights.”
Songwriting began in January 2023 and by April they were playing their first show. “Because it's electronic, I was always thinking there should be some headroom for intensity and energy,” says Ceylan. “So I asked Scott to play drums.” The result quickly became something incendiary. The melding of Ceylan’s engulfing and enthralling production and beats, with Rowland’s endlessly capable vocals, along with MacDonald's added stomp, quickly resulted in the band being one of 2023’s word of mouth live sensations. “It was completely new and very exciting territory to be in,” says MacDonald. “It felt like a whole new world for me to attack.”
All three members have relocated from other cities and countries to be together to focus on the project, such is the hunger around it, along with the immediate sense of potency and potential it has offered. “The scope and ambition of it has already got a lot bigger,” says Rowland.
The five-track EP that they quickly produced is a bedroom recording, but some shabby, lo-fi recording it is not. While it contains a feeling of raw, primal energy, fuelled by a series of unfurling twists and turns, it is also meticulously crafted. “It’s like we are trying to crack some sort of formula in searching for the perfect melody,” says Rowland. “I try loads of iterations to try and get the perfect melody for each bit.”
Be it driving rhythms, mesmerising grooves, or immaculately stacked vocal layers, “there is a constant intensity with no drops in it,” Rowland says. “But that intensity can mean either the heavier stuff or the intense beauty of it.”
Ebbb exist in a constant state of duality and dichotomy, often ricocheting back and forth between pristine beauty and gut-rumbling noise; or even existing in both states simultaneously. This can be heard from the opening ‘Himmel’, a song that steadily builds from a choral-esque soundscape before a pneumatic drill-like beat enters, as Rowland’s voice glides with grace over the grinding rhythm. “That song encapsulates the two sides of the sound we have quite well,” says Rowland. “Having the more ethereal, dreamy vocals but with that undercurrent of the low rumblings. It’s kind of like heaven and hell.”
To further add to this feeling of opposing worlds being explored, the track itself is a straight-forward love song on the surface, but it’s also a meta depiction of the songwriting process taking place in real time. “I talk about lying in a ‘bed of sound’ as if bathing in the music itself,” says Rowland. “The words try to capture the euphoria of different creative ideas gelling together.”
And this sense of euphoria derived from gelling different ideas together can be felt throughout the EP. ‘Torn’ is, as Rowland describes, “possibly the starkest example of the ethereal and choral vocals juxtaposed with the heavy electronic production.” The result is a genuinely beautiful and unique amalgamation of mangled sounds that somehow manages to sound both exquisitely enchanting yet head-twistingly experimental at the same time.
