Band: Kristine Leschper
Album: The Opening, Or Closing Of A Door
VÖ: 04.03.2022
Label/Vertrieb: ANTI- / Indigo
Website: www.mothersband.us
"Ich hatte das Bedürfnis, Liebeslieder zu erforschen, und das ist wirklich der Rahmen von The Opening, Or Closing Of A Door", sagt Leschper. "Ribbon' ist ein Liebeslied, das eine gewisse Spannung in sich birgt - es ist der Versuch, die Absichten eines anderen zu lesen, aufgebaut mit Bildern gegensätzlicher Materialitäten: ein Messer trifft auf ein Band, das nach einer Art Verletzlichkeit verlangt. Eine Andeutung von etwas Neuem, das an diesem Schnittpunkt entsteht.
The Opening, Or Closing Of A Door ist eine Hymne an die Welt der Sinne. Es ist das erste Album, das Leschper unter ihrem Vornamen veröffentlicht, nachdem sie den Namen Mothers nach acht Jahren, in denen sie unter diesem Namen Musik gemacht und veröffentlicht hat, aufgegeben hat. Obwohl beide Projekte von Leschpers eigenwilliger Herangehensweise an das Songwriting geleitet werden, könnten sie nicht unterschiedlicher klingen. Während Mothers sich von den nüchternen, skelettartigen Klängen des Post-Punk und des zeitgenössischen Folk inspirieren ließ, ist Leschpers neues Werk geradezu barock, mit einer Vielzahl von Synthesizern, Streichern, Holzbläsern und mehr als einem Dutzend perkussiver Instrumente.
Über das Video sagt Leschper: "Dies war meine erste Erfahrung mit dem Schreiben und der Regie eines Videos sowie mit dem Entwurf und der Herstellung des Sets. Ich wollte mit der wahrgenommenen Realität oder Unwirklichkeit eines Raums spielen und dabei absolut sparsam mit den Materialien umgehen. Wann beginnt eine Umgebung, ihre "Realität" zu verlieren und ins Imaginäre abzugleiten? Die Lippensynchronisation in Musikvideos hat etwas Interessantes - ich wollte das Mikrofon aus dem Bild werfen, als wollte ich sagen: Das ist keine echte Performance, sondern eine Performance einer Performance, eine Pantomime! Dies ist kein Tisch, es ist ein Gemälde eines Tisches! Objekte kommen und gehen, wechseln zwischen hart und weich, flach und dimensional, in einer Umgebung, die kaum mehr als eine Abstraktion des Innenraums darstellt."
Über The Opening, Or Closing Of A Door
Aus dem Chaos ist das Universum entstanden, und aus dem Chaos kann auch ein Mensch entstehen. Kristine Leschper übertreibt nicht, wenn sie das Gefühl beschreibt, "geboren zu werden", als eine Reihe von persönlichen und globalen Ereignissen in ihr "ein Verständnis dafür auslöste, wie man die Kontrolle im großen Stil aufgeben kann, und daraus ein neues Gefühl der Verbundenheit, des Übergangs und der Vergänglichkeit." Sie erklärt ihren Wunsch, eine Arbeit im Geiste der New World Poets zu kultivieren, in der es, in den Worten von June Jordan, "eine Ehrfurcht vor der materiellen Welt gibt, die mit einer Ehrfurcht vor dem menschlichen Leben beginnt, ein intellektuelles Vertrauen in die Sinnlichkeit als Mittel des Wissens und der Einheit".
The Opening, Or Closing Of A Door tracklist
1. This Animation
2. Picture Window
3. Figure and I
4. Blue
5. A Drop In That Bucket
6. Writhe and Wrestle
7. Carina
8. Stairwell Song
9. All That You Never Wanted
10. Ribbon
11. Compass
12. The Opening Or Closing Of A Door
13. Thank You
Vorherige Infos:
Band: Mothers
Album: Render Another Ugly Method
VÖ: 07.09.2018
Label: Anti- / Indigo
Website: www.mothersband.us
Mothers attempt to exist in two places at once - both singular and collaborative, sprawling and concise, present and distant. Kristine Leschper, songwriter and founding member of the project, explains that it is in the space between opposites that she finds herself. The multifaceted is, by nature, fragmented - each facet reflecting a slightly different perspective of the whole.
It is in this way that their latest record, Render Another Ugly Method, attempts to gain an expanded view of its surroundings through splintered sound, thought, and image. By conversing with her own experiences of attempting to validate herself through work, Leschper moves toward understanding the harmful and often indulgent nature of inextricably coupling the quality of your creative output to your right to exist.
An arts major who spent her teens listening to formative influences like The Microphones, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Sufjan Stevens, Leschper began exploring songwriting when she moved to Athens, Georgia - the birthplace of the widely admired Elephant 6 Collective, whose sound-collage psychedelia undoubtedly influenced her sensibilities. Inspired by the growth that studying art allowed her and energized by the buzzing southern town, she started to perform publicly in 2013 and quickly developed local acclaim for her stark, unflinchingly vulnerable songs.
During this time, she met many local artists and musicians, among them Matthew Anderegg, whom she quickly recognized as an artistic kindred spirit and friend. The following year they began working together to flesh out and arrange a collection of songs she had written, which would become the project’s debut release, When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired. It was recorded quickly and intuitively with help from Drew Kirby and McKendrick Bearden, and engineered by Drew Vandenberg at Chase Park Transduction.
Released in 2016, When You Walk kicked off a sprawling eight months of touring across the US, UK and Europe, as the group honed their take on left-of-center indie rock with an explosive and surprising live show that displayed how forceful the songs translated to a full-band setting. "That first year of touring was an engrossing and resonant jumble of new experiences and unfamiliar music," Leschper reminisced. During this time, Leschper began absorbing new musical influences: longform records like Music Von Harmonia and This Heat's self-titled record, The Fall's satirical lo-fi Dragnet, the interweaving guitars of Lizzy Mercier Descloux’s Rosa Yemen, and music released by now-defunct experimental label OSR tapes such as Recorded In Heaven by Zach Phillips and Monet In The 90’s by Chris Weisman.
She also began to explore polyrhythmic groups like T.P. Orchestre Poyly-Rhythmo de Cotonou and Lifetones, as well as rhythmically dense Fred Frith records like Gravity and The Technology Of Tears. "Traveling with other people full time was a great way to become saturated in new music," Leschper explained. "Being in the car 6-10 hours a day forced me to listen to what others were listening to, whereas my relationship with new music at home tended to be more scattered and topical."
Those influences, varying widely from one another in sonics and structure, greatly informed and shaped Render Another Ugly Method, which unfurls slowly and often without total lucidity. Leschper admits that she felt vaguely interested in alienating the listener within these protracted structures, as a way to communicate her lack of clarity during this bustling and inscrutable period.
Within Mothers, Leschper and Anderegg have remained a creative constant, with other collaborators changing over time. Render Another Ugly Method sees the remnants of Leschper and Anderegg, Chris Goggans and Drew Kirby in musical conversation, through cut-up songs that were torn apart and rebuilt over and over again. Sonically, the record is compartmentalized, each song existing in an environment of its own with disjointed linear fragments that feel as if they hang onto one another by a thread. Leschper describes the collection as “an assemblage of personal vignettes and imagined scenarios that examines consent, escape of the body, power and powerlessness, and the act of making.”
Fittingly, the album addresses the exploration and dissociation that comes with pushing oneself artistically, witnessing a shift in focus within Leschper’s writing from intuitive and insular to a process that's acknowledging and methodological. This is displayed most prominently on “BAPTIST TRAUMA”, a composition of stop-start drums and shards of jagged guitar whose title functions as an acronym, and is ultimately a dissection of Leschper’s practice and work ethic, self-described as “ugly, at times seeking validation through itself. Additional mentions of work and process can be found on “’IT IS A PLEASURE TO BE HERE’”, whose title is presented in quotes, raising questions as to whether this is simply a direct quote or a paradoxical means of displaying unrest within the constraints of “here”, whether that be body or place. Leschper sings, “I wonder how much you can fit inside a painting”, begging a question many of us ask ourselves - is this enough?
The album also dives headfirst into matters of the corporeal - the word “body” is used seven times, perhaps most notably on “WEALTH CENTER/RISK CAPITAL”, where Leschper asserts: “I am excited by the prospect of living without a body - I am ungrateful and this proves it.” This happens alongside many other references to physicality, and again we find ourselves measuring opposites, dealing with representations of here or not here. Within the context of bodily preoccupation, simple sentences become charged with meaning, questioning what can be perceived as most valuable, the physical or the non-physical.
On the closing track of the record, we hear “you must keep quiet - the hands are the organs of feeling”, a sentiment which is at once directive and dominating, yet it conveys an urgent softness. “MOTHER AND WIFE” uses religious imagery of baptism and the iconographic gesture of benediction to describe a moment of inviolable physical intimacy. Render is certainly most engaged in examinations of “not here” - such as “BEAUTY ROUTINE” where Leschper requests of the listener, “show me a beauty routine / to erase me completely”.
When we observe opposites side by side - here, not here; detached, vulnerable; power, powerlessness - we can more clearly see their exaggerated forms because they become grotesque caricatures of themselves. Render Another Ugly Method utilizes opposing imagery, structure, and mood in an effort to better understand the characteristics of its motifs. Mothers experiment in the space between detached and vulnerable, rend and render, because it is between opposites that there is room to exist.
