MODEL/ACTRIZ

Like their name suggests, Model/Actriz seek to channel raw emotions into striking new forms. The band’s surface glamor is supported by nerves of steel, leveraging their focus into moments of wild abandon. Since their songs roar to life off the back of blistering guitar, relentless drums, and pummeling bass there’s an expectation that Model/Actriz aim first and foremost to be shit-starters. But their instrumental muscle couches a searching heart and the Brooklyn quartet have long made a mission to reconcile undefinable feelings by charting a ferocious new path through sound, one that brings jagged emotions back into full, sweaty alignment with the listeners’ bodies.

Their debut record Dogsbody was sexy, dark, and humid, full of eerie passages and veiled menace. Songs like “Amaranth” and “Mosquito” were hot house scenes cast in foreboding half-shadow, with frontman Cole Haden as the hero at the center of its shifting, sultry gloom. The figure he cut was reassuring and ominous, both an experienced guide who could light up the music’s dim corridors and a haunting presence who was inextricably bound to them. The lyrics found him fumbling around in its darkness to become the person he is today – scarred, but made stronger in pursuit of its seduction.

Model/Actriz’s sophomore album Pirouette, which was co-produced and mixed by Seth Manchester and mastered by Matt Colton, their collaborators on Dogsbody, swerves out of the maze and directly into the spotlight. It is Dogsbody’s equally accomplished, but much more self-possessed sister record – thumping and immediate rather than dark and obscure. The light it casts off originates from within, and reflects a band that’s not only grown into its strengths but conquered its demons. Haden no longer vamps from the shadows but at the very front of the stage – and often in the very thick of the crowd – commanding the music’s chaotic center with a poise that channels Grace Jones and Lady Gaga.

After much critical acclaim and an exhausting tour to support the record, the band sought to reinvigorate their visceral live shows that invite that audience into a shared room of carnal ritual. Pirouette is both a natural progression and a calculated reset, a move toward reasserting their command as artists by peeling away the smoke and mirrors to become brighter, heavier, and more direct. The pop thread running throughout the album allows the crowd to witness thumping club music in the spirit of cabaret and manifest the catharsis that comes with hitting the dancefloor.

The word “Pirouette” literally dances on the tongue and few lyricists delectate in the flavor of words as expertly as Haden does. “Like ‘matinee’ or ‘seraglio’” he pouts on “Departures,” “all I want is to be beautiful.” The beauty Haden pines after on Pirouette is the kind that’s forbidden until you give yourself permission to indulge, and even then, it’san enjoyment that’s tempered by a history of shame. On standout track “Cinderella,” the singer’s strutting bravado suddenly gives way to crushing vulnerability – as he stares into a love interest’s eyes, he recounts the childhood shame of backing out of having a Cinderella-themed birthday party, a psychic scar that he’s still able to trace over years later. Even though the memory still aches, the song’s driving force is a willingness to be vulnerable, to extend his arms out for love even if it risks courting hurt.

These lapses, where style and cleverness can’t paper over roiling emotions, are what gives the record its awkward grace. It’s elegant when a ballerina does a pirouette and shameful when a faggot attempts the same, but Haden isn’t defensive or cowed anymore; he grew into the diva he once worshipped growing up as a queer kid, singing along to a pantheon of pop icons like Britney Spears and Mariah Carey. Throughout the record, past and present chafe against one another until Haden claims them as part of a larger tapestry: present day DeKalb station giving way to the Delaware of his childhood, the sexually commanding adult only a memory away from the panicked preadolescent confessing a crush. Throughout Pirouette, Haden isn’t merely strutting through the music but commanding the whole narrative of his life.

The inventiveness of the band’s cohesive musicianship is evident on “Poppy,” with Haden’s lyrics capturing the full scope of their ability to fluctuate between instrumental squalls and barreling, dissonant dance music: “as flesh is made in marble/as marble captures softness/as softness holds a violence/within a pure expression.” Aaron Shapiro, Ruben Radlauer, and Jack Wetmore are a fearsome unit, rearranging the floor and the ceiling of rock music, with punishment and uplift coming from the jagged but interlocking complexity of each band member responding to one another. What should be a fist-fight is instead a well-oiled machine: the knife edge of Wetmore’s guitar shimmering and lacerating from one moment to the next, Radlauer establishing a firm floor only to open a chasm beneath your feet, Shapiro driving his bass backwards and forwards, taking the texture from burnished to bruising and back again.

One of the most oppressive divisions in music is how certain sounds are mapped onto and parceled off from the listener’s body, a fracturing that on Pirouette the group set out to reconcile and transcend. “Be embodied,” Haden whispers at the beginning of “Departures,” as the trill of Wetmore’s guitar and the thump of Radlauer’s drums activate your senses from both high and low ends. As the song builds to a blaze, it triggers elbows and knees, shoulders and hips, as punk aggression surrenders to club-pop. Like their music, Model/Actriz grapple with the thorniness of assuming one’s self to arrive at stunning new ways to be free.

LEYA

“unearthly dissonance: the auditory equivalent of awakening in the fog of a bad dream only to discover you’re still trapped in the nightmare” -The New York Times

“subverting the baroque connotations of its arrangement in favor of something haunting and novel” -Resident Advisor

LEYA – the duo of harpist Marilu Donovan and vocalist/violinist Adam Markiewicz – has long inhabited a beguiling world, blending Medieval-sounding origins with modern folk, classical, pop, and more. From deep roots in the NYC underground to international recognition as a crossover force, their work has found its way into spaces ranging from the club to fashion runways to Pornhub, and beyond.

The basis of LEYA is the unique tuning system of the harp, designed by Donovan for the project, which pairs with the distinctly wide, operatic singing range of Markiewicz, who further blends these vocals with processed violin tones. This sonic template is found on their 2018 debut The Fool and further developed on their 2020 breakthrough follow-up Flood Dream, which The New York Times called “the auditory equivalent of awakening in the fog of a bad dream only to discover you’re still trapped in the nightmare.” This sense of unease has become a distinctive tone for the project, a sort of collision of beauty and calamity that both soothes and disturbs its listeners.

LEYA’s distinctive sound was quickly noticed by other artists, starting with the release of their first single. In 2018 they were approached by rapper Brooke Candy to provide scoring and live acting for her adult film I Love You, which was produced by Pornhub for its Visionaries’ Directors Series and featured sound design by Sega Bodega. After an initial feature on The Fool, they followed in 2019 with the collaborative EP Angel Lust with Eartheater, with whom they have continued a close working relationship. In 2020 they released work with Actress, Liturgy, Drew McDowall (Coil/Psychic TV), and Christina Vantzou. In 2022 they released a fully collaborative mixtape comprised almost solely of features titled Eyeline. Other notable collaborators have included Ecco2K, Varg2TM, Julie Byrne, Okay Kaya, claire rousay, Deli Girls, James K, and many more.

LEYA’s latest release, I Forget Everything, marks their first return to the studio since 2022’s Eyeline and their first solo work since 2020’s Flood Dream. It comes on the heels of a relentless multi-year touring schedule, which began when COVID travel restrictions were lifted in 2021 and saw the duo performing steadily across the world through late 2023. Amidst this time, while working with many of the aforementioned collaborators, they also paired with fashion designers including Louis Vuitton, Calvin Klein x i-D, Acne Studios, Elena Velez, HoodbyAir, video artists including Charles Atlas and Jeremiah Carter, choreographers including Loni Landon, and myriad others in varying modes of performance, scoring, and installations.

Since returning from tour, LEYA have sought to return to the basics of their raw sound but have also reimagined their language, harnessing production experiments percolating in their tangential work in recent years. I Forget Everything marks their first solo release containing elements of electronic production, sourcing from home-recorded to high-fidelity sounds, tracing the bounds of new experiments, while remaining rooted in harp, strings, and voice as the sole source of these sounds. The work regards a “haven scorned,” shifting in perspective between the larger world and one that is private, even imagined. A reaction to calamity, it imagines that abandonment is necessary. The work will mark only the beginning of a new path for LEYA amidst ever-expanding horizons.