Style: Art rock, trip-hop, ambient, electronica, dark folk (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Massive Attack, Radiohead, Chelsea Wolfe, Nine Inch Nails, Björk, Bent Knee, Steven Wilson when goes more electronica
Country: UK
Release date: 1 November 2024
Art has many purposes, but a lot of the time it becomes a vehicle for escapism; I sit contentedly through many a middling film or serviceable album with a handful of bops because that’s all I want from them. It’s only through serendipity and the mystery of resonant frequencies that we can occasionally come across art that wends its tendrils deep into the cracks of the soul; that can resaturate dried husks of truth with meaning once more, that, due to some combination of neural pathways and reverberating sound waves, can invoke a physiological response that borders on the profound.
i Häxa, taken from the Swedish term for “witch”, is a project comprised of vocalist Rebecca Need-Menear (Anavae) and producer/instrumentalist Peter Miles (highlights include producer for Architects and co-producer on Tesseract’s War of Being) and blends art rock, trip-hop, ambient, industrial, and dark folk influences together into one heady brew1. Originally conceived as a single flowing suite, but released as four EPs (the first two of which I reviewed here), and now fused into a single album, there’s a few different ways to listen to the full i Häxa. Everything flows but there are recognisable song formations, distinct quarterings within that flow—at the same time, it makes little sense to listen to, for example, “The Well” without listening to “Fog of War” because the two are parts of a seamless whole.
Swollen layers of synths and pulsating backbeats, graceful piano and lamenting strings form the instrumental backbone of i Häxa with Need-Menear’s sinuous, high-toned voice—in timbre, a more powerful, just-going-through-a-phase sister to Magdalena Bay’s Mica Tenenbaum—sojourning from vulnerable (“Circle”) to threnodic (“The Well”) to boisterous (“Destroy Everything”). Around half the tracks feature spoken word recitations from Need-Menear—the dread monologue of “Fog of War”, the rhythmic poetry that drives “Inferno”, the venomous whispers on “Army”—and her deft ear for enunciation, her oratory range, and paganic lyricism keep the listener hanging on every word. Where spoken word in music all too often falls flat with ropey oration and lazy samples, for i Häxa it’s a vital and astonishingly successful texture.
I could wax lyrical about each track for a while, but suffice it to say that the flow and complexity of the arrangements is pleasing, playing with time signatures (I still can’t work out the beat on “Eight Eyes”), manipulated vocals (“Vessel”, “Sapling”), and reprises (“Circle” builds on a piano melody first explored in “Last at the Table” while repurposing lyrics first heard on “Sapling”). On a song-to-song basis, i Häxa consistently impress, but it’s the interweaving overall structure that sells it, the consistent quartering, the effortless flow, the reprisal of motifs—sometimes familiar, sometimes transformed—all coming together to form something holistic. Despite marrying analogue and digital, i Häxa ultimately feels strangely natural, as though this energy always existed somewhere and Need-Menear and Miles became conduits for its message. That might be a weird metaphor but it’s one of the highest compliments I can pay to music; something that feels less like it was created and more like it always existed in some form and has only just found articulation.
By the time we get to the penultimate double whammy of “Blue Angel” and “Infernum”, i Häxa have brought us to a place of malign chaos where crushing Aphex Twin-esque beats and volatile synths pulsate while cascading neoclassical strings and eerie choral vocals form a sonic tableau of damnation. Miles’ beats are consistently, to use a technical term, sick: evoking Massive Attack on “Underworld” and “Dryland” (that strings/vocal motif/beat combo is straight Heligoland), and more acrid dance acts like The Prodigy or Squarepusher on “Infernum”. Kudos has to go to the strings across the record which are utilised in versatile ways, from the energetic melody on “Dryland” to the tenebrous quartet on “Circle”. The impressive thing is that i Häxa can span such a vast musical territory—in genre, tempo, instrumentation—and make the work in its totality feel cohesive and flowing.
I’ve probably made my point: I really like i Häxa, but I do want to give special attention to the lyrics. Need-Menear’s voice and delivery give life to her poetic lyrics as on “Sapling”—”did all we know turn out to be our worst addictions/and are we failing?, or the recitation on “Fog of War”—“heat has its own smell, its own language, and my skin will be scorched long before I understand its words”. Mysterious and evocative, the imagery swings from more intimate registers (“Last at the Table”, “Dryland”, “Circle”) to existential dread (pretty much everything else), always hitting on something spine-tingling. Additionally, I have to, again, praise the visual accompaniments to the album, as the music video for Part One is engraved on my brain in all its strange imagery and autumnal hues. Everything this duo touches feels like the work of true artists, living and breathing a unique vision.
i Häxa’s eponymous debut has quite simply beguiled me. It’s a stunning work melding a variety of genres and viewpoints into a cohesive work of art, a flowing sonic experience, some primordial evocation of the sublime embodied in the dread words of a lost witch yearning for meaning to manifest within this mortal coil. Need-Menear and Miles have crafted something truly unique in spite of its familiar foundations, haunting in its poignance and sonic force, brimming with a depth to which one can’t help but succumb, something that nestles in the heart and lays eggs there. Come wander into the underworld, give in to your sick desire for the inferno; you won’t regret it, I promise.
Recommended tracks: pick any of the EPs and listen to it in full (or just do the full album, after all it was originally conceived as one long suite) but if you have to have individual tracks to hook you: Underworld, The Well, Dryland, Sapling
You may also like: Ophelia Sullivan, Marjana Semkina, Mingjia, Meer
Final verdict: 9.5/10
- Their first gig was at ArcTanGent festival who lumped them, understandably, in the “uncategorised” category alongside Kalandra (clearly a folk rock group), Sans Froid (art rock), and Doodseskader (ok, I’ll grant them that one). Meanwhile, Imperial Triumphant got a category all to themselves, “esoteric death metal”, which isn’t even all that accurate.
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Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Pelagic Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
i Häxa is:
– Rebecca Need-Menear (vocals)
– Peter Miles (all instruments)
