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

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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

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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

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FIVE FAVOURITES: Vyva Melinkolya

By tethering gauzy reverb and delicate vocals together with her intimate lyrics, American slowcore/shoegaze artist Angel Diaz aka Vyva Melinkolya sculpts emotive soundscapes that explore the awe and sublime terror of the human condition. Her second solo album, Unbecoming (2022), and her collaborative EP Orbweaving – which she co-wrote with multi-instrumentalist and audio engineer Madeline Johnston aka Midwife – both pacify the pain of the past, traversing shadowy territory in both a physical and emotional sense.

This weekend (17th-20th April), Vyva Melinkolya will be performing two sets at Roadburn Festival in Tilburg. Her shows are set to be a highlight of the weekend and we urge you to see her if you are lucky enough to have a ticket for the festival!

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 Angel 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…

 

1. Grouper – AIA:Dreamloss
There is no single musician as important or influential to me as Grouper. I’ve spent nearly a decade of my life listening to her everyday, especially before sleep. Dreamloss found me in late 2018 during the start an extremely dark period in my life. Earlier in the year, when things were less dire, I was obsessing over the other “half” of the double album – AIA: Alien Observer. Alien Observer, in every sense of the word, is dreamy. It has an effervescent quality to it, it can feel like a collection of “tape-saturated” lullabies. As my life began to change however, and I became more and more honest with myself about the things happening to me and around me, Dreamloss was somewhat of a reality check.

When Brian Eno described the genesis of ambient music, he talked of wanting to create sounds that didn’t impose themselves in a space, that could exist as a backdrop. My experience with Dreamloss, especially those first few lessons, couldn’t have been more different. The album opener ‘Dragging the Streets’ starts with the line “can you hear the sounds they make at night” which, still terrifies me. Speaking of lyrics, the words to ‘Soul Eraser’ are almost all intelligible. I have this fantasy of sorts that if I’m somehow able to figure out what she’s singing, I will disappear. Orbweaving (especially the title track) would not exist without this album.

2. Low – Curtain Hits The Cast
If Grouper is the most important solo musician to me, Low is the most important band . First of all, the title is extremely ominous, even kind of “Doomy”. I consider the first four tracks of this album to be one of the strongest side-As in alternative music. ‘The Plan’ is maybe my favorite “Mimi” song, her voice is at its warmest and has a sort of “wisdom” to it, even if the lyrics are mostly questions. Her voice always feels “motherly” to me. This album has just as many “loving” moments as it does “dark”. Two songs later, ‘Mom Says’ (one of my favorite “Alan” songs) is eerie in a way that’s hard to describe. It ends with the line “mom says, we ruined her body”, jeez.

Side B is incredible as well, with ‘Do You Know How To Waltz’ feeling like both an ascent and a descent into the cosmos or the ocean. The album ends with a song called ‘Dark’ which is essentially a children’s song about “how to not be afraid of the dark” – that one makes me tear up the most I think. I was listening to this album a lot in summer 2020, I have a very specific memory of putting it on during a drive to Bloomington, Indiana. Now I can’t do any sort of drive over 3 hours without it. Especially when it’s warm out. Low sounds best in the midwest and pairs best with the sounds of crickets and trucks going by.

3. Nicole Dollanganger – Natural Born Losers
Another album I fell in love with in summer 2020. I had listened before, but that’s when it fully “hit” me. I was spending a lot of time outside, especially at the skate park until the very early hours of the morning. It couldn’t have sound-tracked that time better. If you haven’t heard this album yet and want to (you should) wait till late May or June (it’s to be enjoyed every season though). This album is sensual, it’s yearning, it’s violent, it sinks its claws into you from start to finish. The final chorus of ‘Mean’ makes me feel like I’m being dragged across pavement, while ‘You’re So Cool’ feels absolute soaring and it’s one of the most “devotional” love songs ever.

I’ve truly learned so much from this record – and from Nicole’s music in general – about song writing. Especially how to set a scene and keep that scene in people’s minds. Production wise, the album has my favorite examples of “ebow” (device that vibrates the guitar string using a magnets) use. A lot of times when people record with it (myself included) it sounds harsh and awkward, but it just floats over this album like a cirrus cloud. Track for track, never have “pop” caliber vocals and post-rock instrumentals had a more beautiful marriage.

4. Giles Corey – Giles Corey
I think the term “concept album” is used inappropriately at times, so I shy away from using it. But if you held a gun to my head and asked me my favorite concept album, I would say Giles Corey. First of all, one of my favorite things about the record is the companion book, which I have annotated and dog-eared excessively. I would love to do something like that with a Vyva Melinkolya album one day. I’m a fan of big sounds, and as a musician I sort of default to maximalism. Giles Corey is an absolutely massive album with absolutely titanic sounds. ‘The Haunting Presence’ and ‘Buried Above Ground’ are perfect examples of this, heavily layered but with all sounds 100% essential. The album is also a thorough depiction of depression that feels universal without ever feeling “cliched”. There will definitely be some Giles Corey worship on the next Vyva Melinkokya album.

5. Lisa Germano – In the Maybe World
Though as a listener I have a preference for bigger sounds, Lisa Germano does an incredible job of making superficially “smaller” songs hit like a ton of bricks. If Natural Born Losers is a perfect summer album, In the Maybe World is the perfect winter album, and not just because the cover art is a winter scene. I got into this album in late 2022. I had spent a couple years before that enjoying her earlier albums like Geek The Girl and Slide which are more lively and gritty in comparison to her later work. In the Maybe World is sort of mutable in the respect that, if you’re listening for the textures it reads like an ambient album (I fall asleep to it sometimes), while if you’re giving it your full attention, it’s a body of work that’s deeply confessional and heart wrenching.

Lisa Germano has an honesty to her song writing that’s a lot to reckon with at times, but validating as well. When she says “go to hell, fuck you” on ‘Red Thread’ (a beautiful, almost medieval sounding guitar ballad) I feel so vindicated every time. It’s a perfect album for breakups and troubles of the heart and when I found it back in 2022, it was relatable to a painful degree. To me, it’s also an album about isolation and a fear of the world outside — which I currently relate to, painfully. As a musician, both as a lyricist and a multi-instrumentalist (violin, piano, guitar, accordion, mandolin, other things I’m sure) I look up to her a lot and I feel like she deserves a lot more credit and exposure for decades of amazing albums.

Thanks to Angel for sharing her favourites with us!
Listen to her album Unbecoming here

Follow Vyva Melinkolya on bandcamp, Spotify, Instagram & Facebook

Photo Credit: Hayden Anhedonia

Kate Crudgington
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