Alliyah Enyo

Echo's Disintegration

Somewhere Between Tapes

MP3 $9.90

11/04/2022 5060165488018

SBT01

FLAC $11.99

11/04/2022 5060165488018

SBT01

Edinburgh's Alliya Enyo takes inspiration from William Basinski's "Disintegration Loops" and choral church music on her first proper release - a fusion of transcendent, reel-to-reel damaged vocal drones and rumbling atmospheres. RIYL Grouper, Cucina Povera, Julianna Barwick.

It was a 2021 performance at St.Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Edinburgh that provided the jumping off point for "Echo's Disintegration". Multidisciplinary artist Alliyah Enyo envisioned the performance as two incarnations informed by the recording environment itself, using the reverb of the cathedral itself to bend the sound and envelop the vocals. The space didn't just aesthetically alter the sound of Enyo's music, the imposing building heightened each sound's inherent spirituality, bricking it into the architecture of culture almost by design.

Later at Glasgow's Green Door Studio, Enyo re-imagined the performance as a sequence of discrete tracks, using reel-to-reel loops to damage the sound even further than was possible in the live space. The complete 43 minute cathedral recording in included here in full, alongside the studio extensions; unsurprisingly the material is very different - the live performance is delightfully reduced and low-key, meditating into Eliane Radigue-style drone at times, while the studio versions ring out with more clarity and separation.

Our favorite moments are when Enyo's voice is distorted into a dreamy, wordless slop of saturation and harmony, like on the brilliant 'when my mind is quiet i drift 2 u water2wine', a track that almost sounds like Cocteau Twins at half speed. Tearjerking in the best way.