Leya are a New York duo comprising harpist Marilu Donovan and violinist Adam Markiewicz, who seem to occupy a space roughly equidistant from ambient music, avant garde composition and drone-based electronica. They’ve soundtracked (and starred in) a porn film directed by rapper Brooke Candy; they’ve collaborated on shows for fashion designers including Louis Vuitton, Calvin Klein, Acne Studios and Hood by Air; and they’ve worked with dozens of musicians on the boundaries of experimental pop and the avant garde, such as Christina Vantzou and members of Coil.
I Forget Everything is their first release since 2022’s Eyeline, which saw them working with like-minded mavericks Actress, Claire Rousay and Julie Byrne, who added string sections and electronics. This strips back such ornamentation and concentrates on Leya’s sinister core elements – multi-tracked violins wreathed in spectral reverb; ghostly vocals; arpeggios played on a harp that sounds like it’s constantly shifting out of tune. On Corners, those arpeggios tumble like rainfall; on Fake, its vamps are slow and deliberate, where every chord change sounds like a titanic feat.
The defining feature of Leya’s sound is Markiewicz’s voice. He sings in an androgynous, yawning whisper, his diction so indistinct that he starts to resemble Liz Fraser of Cocteau Twins. Sometimes, on the doomy, drone-based Baited, he sounds like the male voice in a Gregorian choir, but more usually he sounds like a female opera singer, moving from a contralto into a mezzo-soprano register. Most startling is Weaving, which sounds like a minor-key gothic hymn that’s been beamed in from another dimension. The effect is eerie and unsettling throughout, music that sounds simultaneously 300 years old and somewhere from the distant future.
Also out this month
Playlists of “relaxing” piano music are hugely popular but few are as compelling as Piano1, a compilation on Section1 records featuring contemporary composers, including a delightfully clunky Laraaji, the muted tones of Alice Boman, the machine-like prepared piano of ML Buch and rapturous improvisations of Ichiko Aoba and Alan Wyffels. The latest LP by Zeena Parkins, Dam Against the Spring Tide (Relative Pitch) sees her playing harp alongside an unorthodox ensemble but the highlight is the ultra-spiky and frankly terrifying first half. Vienna’s Oliver Johnson, AKA Dorian Concept, is best known for his rather stately rave music on Ninja Tune, but his latest project Music From a Room Full of Synths (-OUS Records) sets him loose in the real-life sonic playground that is the Swiss Museum for Electronic Music Instruments, where he creates a hugely varied range of Wendy Carlos-style miniatures on a range of archive analogue synths.
Source: theguardian.com
