FIVE FAVOURITES: Leah Levinson (Agriculture)

Bassist and vocalist Leah Levinson from Los Angeles black-metal noise merchants Agriculture is a potent voice in the heavy music scene. Sharing songwriting and vocal duties with guitarist Dan Meyer, Leah’s guttural screams permeate the band’s diverse, doom-laden sounds; now coined as “ecstatic black metal”. It’s not just the physical volume and sheer power of her voice that has garnered Agriculture such a loyal following though. On the band’s most recent album, The Spiritual Sound, Leah’s raw lyricism tackles transphobia, queerphobia and misogyny; highlighting how vital her voice as a trans woman truly is.

Released via The Flenser in October this year, The Spiritual Sound is a culmination of both Leah and Dan’s dismantling of the human experience, in both its most simplistic and most complex forms. Take the deeper, more personal cut ‘The Weight’ for example, on which Leah explores both the triumphs and the traumas of queer life.

“‘The Weight’ was written reflecting on a particular month last year when so much seemed heightened,” Leah explains. “It seemed like many of my friends were being harassed in public – both verbally and physically – for being trans, for being queer and/or for being women (it’s not always clear which). This was also a time when I was feeling a lot of love and a lot of community. I wanted this song and the songs around it to honestly reflect both these elements. I wanted to write about transness, but didn’t want to rely on political aphorisms and indulgent images of suffering. I wanted to paint a holistic portrait of queer life.”

We think one of the best ways to get to know an artist is by asking what music inspired them to write in the first place. We caught up with Leah to ask about her “Five Favourites” and she picked five albums by an eclectic range of artists who have inspired her songwriting techniques. Check out her choices below and scroll down to watch the official lyric video for Agriculture’s single ‘The Weight’ too…

 

1. Lou Reed – Transformer
I don’t shut up about this album. I discovered it when I was about thirteen and have regularly rediscovered it throughout my life since. The songs here are odd, lopsided, messy, and sometimes overly simple. I think they reflect Lou finding himself as a solo artist and coming to understand (alongside the society and culture around him) many aspects of himself, from gender and sexuality to drug use and spirituality. It’s an album about being in the world that sounds like it comes from the pitch black of nowhere. The production and arrangements by David Bowie and Mick Ronson hardly nod to rock music; letting chamber, jazz, and symphonic instrumentation flirt alongside Lou’s gravelly voice while more traditional rock instruments are mainly used in less conventional ways. I sometimes think of these songs as nursery rhymes and lullabies for addicts and queers, and, in that way, so many lyrics from this album exist in my mind as riddles, koans, and mantras that I’m sure I’ll never solve. This album has shaped my life and output as an artist in immeasurable ways.

2. Laurel Halo – Quarantine
This album came out when I was at the formative age of eighteen and hasn’t left me in the decade-plus since. I think it has one of the greatest covers of all time and somehow manages to live up to it. As a collection of deconstructed ambient pop songs, I find this album difficult to ever really grasp. At the same time, that ungraspable, atmospheric quality feels at odds with its earworms and its moment-to-moment intrigue. It’s a beautiful instance of an album that feels like an entire world, perfectly paced and thoroughly explored. Any time I hear it I feel I am home without ever really knowing (or having to know) what it’s about in the first place.

3. The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground & Nico
I have a hard time choosing a favourite between The Velvet Underground’s first three albums, so I’m going with this one because it was my introduction to them and in many ways, it feels like it’s got it all in one. The repetitive, minimal song structures on this album influenced me at a pretty young age; an early lesson that less can be more. Moe Tucker’s drumming is an important contributing factor for that, and I think deserves greater acknowledgement as a major innovation in rock, pop, and underground music. Beyond that, the arrangements on this album showed me both how little you need to make something work, and how much noise and complexity a listener can tolerate when there’s a strong song at the center of it. I’ve also always loved that the album has multiple voices on it, with Lou Reed and Nico alternating leads. That’s something Agriculture has and something I try to do in some way on most albums I make. I think it makes an album more vibrant and less lonely and monolithic. This album laid the format for so much music I love that comes after it, from the Ramones to My Bloody Valentine to Godflesh and others. It’s the foundation.

4. Entombed – Left Hand Path
This is my obligatory metal choice for this list. It’s unlike any other metal album I’ve ever heard, but in such a subtle way. Entombed formed in 1987 from members of Nihilist and helped establish the early Swedish death metal scene. This album is sort of the ultimate demo of the drop tuning and “Swedish chainsaw” sound of the maxed out HM-2 pedal that together came to define the Swedish death metal sound. To me, that sound is heavy in a warm way. Feelings of both dread and comfort coexist on this album, like there’s this push and pull around a fear of death and a complete acceptance of mortality and fate. I think this is emphasized by the material on the album which feels much more serious and mature than the slasher, sword and sorcery, vampire, and simplistic satanist imagery that permeated metal at that time. This is one of the few metal albums that feels like it’s about death in a real way. That its guitar solos, demon growls, and headbanger riffs don’t detract from that, but rather add to it, makes it all the more special.

5. Albert Ayler – Love Cry
The Albert Ayler Trio’s Spiritual Unity was one of the first and furthest out pieces of experimental/avant garde music I was introduced to. The song ‘Ghosts’ was kind of an anthem for Ayler – there’s two versions on that album alone and he continued to revisit throughout his career – and it’s the song that drew me to Ayler for years and years to come, while I puzzled over the cacophony that surrounded it. Ayler’s project is one centered around collective improvisation and the asynchronous comingling of spirits through music. What makes ‘Ghosts’ so great is its tuneful, almost naïve melody that is defiantly bright and strong. It provides coloration and structure to the unbound playing that delivers it while giving a strong footing for its improvisers to take off from. That song is revisited early on Love Cry, an album that adapts Ayler’s early vision and imagines a way forward with it. Love Cry has some of the most innovative arrangements in jazz for its time in a way that still sounds fresh today. Beyond that, it expands on the compositional conceit of ‘Ghosts’ in its many songs without ever repeating itself. It’s an album that shows Ayler searching spiritually in every direction and finding answers only transmissible through music.

Thanks to Leah for sharing her favourites with us!
Watch the lyric video for Agriculture’s single ‘The Weight’ below.

Follow Agriculture via bandcamp, bluesky, Facebook & Instagram
Check out Agriculture’s official website too

Photo Credit: Olivia Crumm

Kate CrudgingtonLeave a comment

FIVE FAVOURITES: Jouska

Using her music to break the cycles of self-doubt and anxiety, Norwegian songwriter and producer Jouska creates shape-shifting alt-pop with deep emotional resonance. Her latest album, How Did I Wind Up Here?, is a thoughtful extrapolation of grief, distance and time; showcasing her ability to move through heavy emotions with impressive charm and grace.

We think one of the best ways to get to know an artist is by asking what music inspired them to write in the first place. We caught up with Jouska to ask about her “Five Favourites” – and she picked five albums by an eclectic range of artists who have inspired her songwriting techniques.

Check out her choices below and scroll down to watch the official lyric video for Jouska’s tentative single ‘California’ too…

1. The Books – Lost and Safe
I discovered this album when I was around sixteen, and listening to it now immediately takes me back to high school. I would listen when I was heartbroken, when I felt alien and alone, and I used to dream about leaving the small town in Norway I was from, about going to New York or somewhere far away. It kind of feels like the soundtrack to a version of myself I don’t really remember clearly anymore, but still feel connected to. It’s full of imperfections and warmth and I love the little details, the humour and the sadness underneath. It has this strange calmness to it, even when it’s chaotic. It was a big inspiration for me long before I even started producing my own songs, and their use of sampling, spoken word and cello has always been especially inspiring for my own music.

2. Bon Iver – Bon Iver
I first heard this album in high school. I would sit in class with my headphones on, zoning out, trying not to cry. It was the first time I heard something that sounded so big yet so fragile. Everything about it felt like winter. I think that’s why it resonated so much with me at the time. I was so fragile myself, so unsure of who I was or what I wanted. This album held me through some rough years when I was trying to find myself and also through a horrible teenage heartbreak. Even now, when I listen to the Bon Iver album, I get that same knot in my stomach. It’s like an old memory that never fades. It still feels like something to return to when I don’t know where else to go.

3. The Radio Dept. – Pet Grief
I started listening to The Radio Dept. in high school, mostly songs from Clinging to a Scheme, but Pet Grief became really important to me later on. For the last few years, it’s been one of those albums I keep coming back to. There’s something about its world that feels endless. Everything sounds soft, distant, and nostalgic, like it’s covered in a thin layer of fog. It’s been a huge inspiration on my album. It’s melancholic but comforting. I love the vocals and how they’re processed – that hazy, detached sound that somehow makes everything feel even more emotional. They’re Swedish and I’m Norwegian, and somehow it feels like we’re connected in a way, like the same kind of melancholy runs through the songs and through where we’re from, haha! There’s something familiar about it that I can’t really explain, but I always feel at home when I listen.

4. ML Buch – Suntub
I discovered Suntub last year, and it completely blew me away. It’s rare for me, as an adult, to find something that makes me feel the way music did when I was a teenager. ML Buch’s songwriting and guitar playing is intricate,and the sound is just otherworldly. This album reminded me what it feels like to be obsessed with music again. Every time I listen, I notice something new: a texture, a chord change, a detail I missed. It’s so fluid and detailed, like a dream world that keeps shifting. It gave me a sense of creative hunger I hadn’t felt in a long time. It’s one of those albums that just makes me want to go home and make more music.

5. Jenny Hval – Blood Bitch
In 2020, when I was struggling a lot, this album became my soundtrack. I would walk around in the Norwegian winter, completely wrapped up in it, feeling sorry for myself. Blood Bitch is dark, mysterious and ethereal; it feels like being inside a dream that’s both beautiful and unsettling. Seeing her perform this album live was one of those moments I’ll never forget. I remember standing there, completely stunned. I love how she mixes the personal and the abstract, how she makes something so strange feel so familiar. At the time, I think I needed something that matched the chaos in my head. This album did that – it was sad but also comforting. It made me feel seen in a weird, indirect way.

Thanks to Jouska for sharing her favourites with us!
Watch the lyric video for her track ‘California’ below.

Follow Jouska on bandcamp, YouTube & Instagram

Photo Credit: Hans Olav Settem

Kate CrudgingtonLeave a comment

FIVE FAVOURITES: Me Lost Me

By exploring the binary oppositions of hope and despair, experimental Newcastle-based artist Jayne Dent aka Me Lost Me pushes herself to her emotional limits. On her most recent album, This Material Moment, released in June via Upset the Rhythm, she examines the power of “words as a material”, how we interpret them and their contrasting abilities to physically soothe or sting us in life’s rawest moments.

She was inspired to write her fourth record after she attended a workshop with Julia Holter, where she explored the catharsis of automatic writing techniques and “chance-based writing strategies,” resulting in her most personal and vulnerable offering to date.

We think one of the best ways to get to know an artist is by asking what music inspired them to write in the first place. We caught up with Me Lost Me to ask about her “Five Favourites” – and she picked five albums by an eclectic range of artists who have inspired her songwriting techniques.

Check out her choices below and scroll down to watch the official video for Me Lost Me’s single ‘A Painting of The Wind’ too…

 

A note from Me Lost Me: I’m an album listener through and through. I love being lost in another world for 30-60 minutes, popping my headphones on, going for a walk and being whisked away. I chose these 5 album specifically because of the lasting impact they’ve had on the music I make as Me Lost Me, from when I was a teenager to just after I’d released my first record, when I was figuring out where I wanted to go with my music.

1. Patrick Wolf – Lycanthropy
Patrick Wolf has a lot to answer for! I grew up with the folk music my parents loved and then suddenly, here was someone drawing on that tradition and screwing with it. Crunchy intense pop electronics with these melodic motifs that felt so rooted in the music I knew and loved, but fresher, weirder and darker.

When I was a teenager I had a ukulele that got accidentally smashed to the point of it being unplayable. Later that year, I won tickets to a gig and meet ’n’ greet in London. A friend and I travelled down from Chesterfield, and I took what was left of this ukulele for him to sign (I didn’t have a record player at the time so I figured there was no point getting a vinyl for the signing). When we spoke, I told him I wanted to write music and remember him saying basically, “well, do it then, start right now”, and on the ukulele he wrote “Jayne, follow the star” (quoting some of his lyrics). I still have it.

I think I needed the permission, perhaps, to just go for it. His first few albums really presented me with the idea that you can play with older forms and ignore genre boundaries. I think that was massive for me then, and clearly stuck with me.

2. Bjork – Homogenic
I struggled to pick a Bjork album, but Homogenic was probably the first one I really fell in love with. In the end, I also had to choose this one because the “emotional landscapes” line in ‘Joga’ is something I’ve held onto as a conceptual ideal of the music I want to make – emotional landscapes – and I still go back to this idea when I write and arrange stuff.

The blend of organic and electronic sounds is so well done, it’s a proper cyborg album, fleshy and robotic in equal parts. Its hard to pick a stand out track, they are all amazing for different reasons and speak to me differently on each listen through. You have songs like ‘Unravel’, so intimate and vast at the same time and the simple visual metaphor in the lyrics is beautiful. Then tracks like ‘Bachlorette’ so full of this angry feral beauty, not as many belt-along tunes as other Bjork albums but they still get me going.

She manages to express this messy, tangled web of emotions and make me feel them along with her. I’ve always thought if I could ever make someone feel that way with my own music, I’d be so happy.

3. Einsturzende neubauten – Ende Neu
There’s a theme emerging here perhaps, artists that capture a multitude of things at once. The reason I love this album isn’t how well knitted together these different elements are, however, the thing I love most about Ende Neu is how the different flavours clash up against each other, it’s delightfully jarring. Its got that classic Einsturzende Neubauten intensity, but it manifests differently in each track. It’s got chant-along tracks like ‘Was Ist Ist’ and the creeping menace of ‘The Garden’, industrial moments, classical moments, and Blixa’s voice – super sweet one moment and pig squealing the next.

I love this album because it’s proof that you can lean into different feelings and flit around. You can be extremely serious and intense and then also be daft, give people whiplash if you like – an album doesn’t need to be a vibe-monolith. ‘The Garden’ is the stand out track for me. It’s the track that made me fall for Einsturzende Neubauten in the first place, it’s so simple but insistent. The lyrics are almost amusingly mundane “you will find me if you want me in the garden / unless its pouring down with rain” but then suddenly expanded out into this abstracted, time-stretching poem.

4. Laurie Anderson – Big Science
When I was studying fine art as an undergrad, I was playing around with musical forms, making sound art and performance art. In a tutorial, I was advised to listen to Laurie Anderson. This album completely blew apart my idea of art and music as separate entities, and rightly so – why would they need to be separate? Why did I ever think they were?

It changed how I framed my work completely and the whole Me Lost Me project came out of this desire to blur art and music – folk and electronic, past and future – and this album was so important for that. It’s a delirious dizzying and surreal experiment in storytelling. It gives snapshots into these strange narratives that are just out of the reach of reality, echoed by the combination of her voice and vocoder, such an uncanny valley feeling. It still gives me goosebumps.

5. Jenny Hval – Blood Bitch
I heard this album after I’d released my first record, Arcana, while I was putting The Good Noise together. It was the first of Jenny Hval’s work I’d come across and it instantly hooked me. It has everything I love: surprising twists, moments of jarring collage, of softness, of raw emotion, moments of addictive, euphoric pop choruses, lyrics I want to investigate, to know intimately. It’s a journey through so many emotional states, it’s the kind of album you want to crawl inside of.

I’ve been a huge fan of her work since and every record is stunning in different ways. I appreciate an approach to album-making that is almost like a collection of related art pieces, not necessarily the same medium, but linked with a through line. It’s like a concept album, I guess, but not in a classic “this has a linear narrative” way. Jenny Hval’s albums instead feel like explorations of an idea and an investigation into something, asking questions that are too messy for a simple answer.

Thanks to Me Lost Me for sharing her favourites with us!

Follow her on bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify, Instagram & Facebook

Photo Credit: Amelia Read

Kate CrudgingtonLeave a comment

Five Favourites: Laura Reznek

Having received much acclaim for her debut and cross-disciplinary stage show Agrimony, and then this year’s innovative album The Sewing Room, Canadian songwriter and composer Laura Reznek interweaves poignant reflections on the struggles of living in a patriarchal society and personal loss, with her glistening folk-tinged melodies and delicate rich vocals.

We think one of the best ways to get to know an artist is by asking what music inspires them. So, ahead of her upcoming UK tour which kicks off next month, we caught up with Laura to find out about the five albums that inspire her the most. Read about their five favourites below, and then make sure you check out her gorgeous album The Sewing Room…

Judee Sill – Judee Sill
Out of all of these, Judee Sill is the newest discovery for me and I don’t really know how it took me so long to find her. I think this record is so incredible – honest, sad, hopeful, beautiful – and when I first heard the opening song ‘Crayon Angels’ it felt like this warm wave washing over me. Every time I put it on – especially when that oboe hits! –  I always breathe a sigh of relief.

Simon & Garfunkel – Bookends
I will love Simon & Garfunkel until the end. This album especially was in my ears a lot while I was writing and recording The Sewing Room. I feel like it’s a really varied record and takes you on a journey. I always love an element of spoken text or conversation woven into music, so love ‘Voices of Old People’ which comes in before ‘Old Friends’ – which has a string arrangement I’m obsessed with. And I think that ‘America’ is the most perfect song ever written.

Madison Cunningham – Revealer
This album blew my mind when it came out. I think Madison Cunningham is one of the best songwriters out there and that this record is pretty much perfect. I heard ‘Life According to Rachael’ in the midst of immense grief and I found it incredibly comforting. I love her use of language and textures in her arrangements.

Anais Mitchell – Anais Mitchell
Another 2022 release, Anais Mitchell’s self-titled record has been a staple in my life. She’s been a longtime inspiration – I saw her play solo in 2016, the day after the US election and the week Leonard Cohen died – and it was the only show I’ve ever openly wept at. ‘Bright Star’ is probably in my ears about ten times a day.

Fiona Apple – Fetch The Bolt Cutters
I will never stop being in awe of Fiona Apple. This album was the soundtrack to my lockdown, and the main reason why I wanted to try my hand at producing The Sewing Room on my own, after I heard she’d made the majority of it in Garage Band. It’s raw, it’s human, and makes me feel empowered, uncomfortable, and elated, which is everything I want from a record.


Huge thanks to Laura for sharing her Five Favourites! Make sure you have a listen to the exquisite The Sewing Room, and then catch her when she’s over in the UK in September and October! Tickets here.


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