LEYA have shared a music video for their new single "INTP" from their forthcoming sophomore album Flood Dream (releasing March 6th via NNA Tapes), which premiered today via i-D Magazine.
Her second video with LEYA, director Kathleen Dycaico explains the visuals: "'INTP' follows the scent of "Sister" from The Fool, but goes darker -- a lush and sinister horror-romance. Young lovers, full of a purity of life to invite envy from any watcher, break into a house they believe to be empty... Or is it? As the lovers' search to find each other grows more urgent, the track revels in tension, an urgency crossed with an insistently slow lament."
Framed within a network of outlying artists whose experiments sketch out far-flung deviations from aboveground movements, the work of New York-based duo LEYA stands out as an anomaly that exemplifies the idiosyncratic impulses of the avant fringe. Harpist/vocalist Marilu Donovan and violinist/vocalist Adam Markiewicz seem from a sidelong perspective to approximate the languages of neo-classical performance and post-minimalist exploration in their austere, meticulously rendered compositions. In truth, the duo's own self-perception casts their project closer to the axes of noise and punk than conventional refinement.
As formally educated composers acutely aware of the traditions and conventions into which their instruments fit, Donovan and Markiewicz exploit preconceptions and confound expectations by pursuing the most transportive and emotional means of communication with their audience. Just as their peers warp systems of electronics or tropes from the pop and rock traditions, LEYA channel the surface signifiers of orchestral music and 20th century classical composition into deeply personal works that encompass bursts of raw dissonance alongside moments of spectral beauty. The duo's performances shift the spotlight from the authority figure looming over an ensemble of players to those planted in the corner of a dimly lit basement populated with freaks who can't help but fall into silence when confronted with the duo's bewildering stimuli.
LEYA's album Flood Dream follows their acclaimed debut album The Fool (NNA, 2018), as well as Angel Lust, a collaboration with Eartheater released with PAN this December, and their soundtrack to PornHub-exclusive short film I Love You directed by Brooke Candy. The Fool presented the project both in densely plotted duo pieces and joint efforts with New York luminaries like Eartheater, PC Worship, and Sunk Heaven. Though guests from LEYA's wide social environment appear on Flood Dream, including vocalist/producer GABI, flautist/synthesist John Also Bennett of Forma, and bassist Tristan Kasten-Krause, the album pares back the presence of external artists as full co-writing collaborators to highlight the raw core of the duo's practice. Flood Dream plays out as a decadent feast of the senses struck through with the disturbed influence of intrusive thoughts.
The album's pieces each follow their own sinuous narrative arc, building from empty expanses of detuned harp arpeggios and languid smears of violin into climaxes draped in Markiewicz's impassioned vocal lines. LEYA generate tension with their darkly operatic sense of drama, conveyed in weeping melodies and the desolation of solitary notes against blank backdrops, as they dole out fragments of resolution or momentary triumph before sinking back into uncertainty. Their arrangements bridge instances of baroque ornamentation and blocks of harmonic density with stretches of fugue state-inducing confusion built over dreary standing tones and repeated dissonant intervals.
In an industry obsessed with precise classification, how do we make sense of the ambiguous shadow LEYA casts over the landscape? The duo reject the tenets of the new music establishment and thrive within a scene of noise transgressors and electronic auteurs. In all of its indulgence and emotional upheaval, their music adapts as easily to the context of arthouse pornography as to a late-night bill populated with no wave acts and performance artists, without ever coming off as a harsh juxtaposition. LEYA's music reveals that the boundaries between these disciplines aren't boundaries at all - that everything pours from the same well into different vessels that might be carried off in opposite directions, always return to a shared source.
Tour Dates
March 5 - Brooklyn, NY @ Trevorshaus †
March 6 - Virginia Beach, VA @ The Pink Dinghy
March 7 - Athens, GA @ Adverse Fest
March 8 - Atlanta, GA @ The Bakery
March 9 - West Palm Beach, FL @ Chill Pillars HQ
March 10 - Miami, FL @ Churchill's
March 11 - Gainesville, FL @ Civic Media Center
March 12 - Birmingham, AL @ Saturn
March 13 - New Orleans, LA @ The Mudlark
March 14 - Houston, TX @ Rudyard's
March 15 - Denton, TX @ Rubber Gloves
March 16 - Dallas, TX @ RBC
March 17 - 22 Austin, TX @ SXSW
March 23 - El Paso, TX @ Love Buzz
March 24 - Tucson, AZ @ Wooden Tooth
March 25 - Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon
March 26 - San Francisco, CA @ Adobe Books
March 27 - Oakland, CA @ The Dome
March 29 - Phoenix, AZ @ The Compound
March 30 - Albuquerque, NM @ The Desert House
March 31 - Tulsa, OK @ Tulsa Noise
April 1 - St. Louis, MO @ Blank Space
April 2 - Lexington, KY @ Robert's House
April 3 - Baltimore, MD @ Floristree
April 15 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Thunderbird *
April 16 - Grand Rapids, MI @ Pyramid Scheme *
April 17 - Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle *
April 18 - Detroit, MI @ The Sanctuary *
April 19 -Cleveland, OH @ Now That's Class *
April 21 - Toronto, ON @ Baby G *
April 22 - Montreal, QC @ L'Esco *
April 23 - Boston, MA @ Great Scott *
April 24 - Brooklyn, NY @ Baby's All Right *
April 25 - Philadelphia, PA @ MilkBoy *
July 2020 - Brooklyn, NY @ Pioneer Works
