Description
#alliyahenyo #vinyl #vinylrecords
Alliyah Enyo, known for her innovative approach to sound, captivated listeners with her 2022 album “Echo’s Disintegration,” where she masterfully infused the haunting ambience of William Basinski’s “Disintegration Loops” with her own ethereal choral arrangements. Now, Enyo returns with an even more enveloping auditory experience, collaborating with the enigmatic ambient producer Florian T M Zeisig. Their latest project offers a mesmerizing blend of looped vocal soundscapes that will resonate deeply with fans of artists like Grouper, Julianna Barwick, and Seefeel.
In 2022, Enyo expanded her artistic horizons by working with the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop on a monumental two-hour composition inspired by selkies, the mythical shape-shifting creatures of Celtic folklore. This piece, which delved into themes of memory, grief, and the inexorable passage of time, was realized as a “sonorous myth” installation. The performance was a profound exploration of sound, using echo and tape loops to mirror the communication of humpback whales, effectively submerging her voice into a vast, oceanic depth. The project earned her the Sonic Arts award at the Scottish Awards for New Music, marking a significant achievement in her career.
In her latest work, Enyo revisits the selkie-inspired composition, this time in collaboration with Berlin-based producer Florian T M Zeisig, who adopts the moniker Angel R for this project. The A-side of the album features Enyo condensing the original two-hour composition into 11 ethereal fragments. These pieces are carefully sculpted in Glasgow’s Green Door Studio, where her voice is transformed into weightless, Radigue-like incantations that flow seamlessly, echoing the fragmented, looping nature of memory and time. The vocal textures are reminiscent of ancient Celtic ballads and church music, yet they are obscured and abstracted through layers of reverb, distortion, and repetition, creating a haunting, otherworldly soundscape that evokes the depths of the sea.
On the B-side, Florian T M Zeisig responds with three extended, immersive tracks that complement and expand upon Enyo’s work. His approach is reminiscent of his previous exploration of corroded Enya loops, here manipulating Enyo’s voice into delicate whispers and gauzy, textured expressions. The tracks, particularly ‘Gates of Heaven,’ dissolve into hypnotic reflections, fading slowly into the ambient ether. Together, Enyo and Zeisig’s collaboration offers a deeply immersive experience, inviting listeners to lose themselves in the mesmerizing interplay of sound, memory, and myth.
