Velvet Litany by Vogaria

We’ve always been about turning the club into something more. A cathedral, a warzone, a space where every raw feeling gets amplified, where a broken heart can still find its rhythm on the floor. With *Velvet Litany*, we finally poured that whole messy, beautiful journey into twelve tracks. This isn't just an album; it’s a full-blown liturgy for all the love stories that didn't end with a fairy tale, the kind that leave marks but also make you stronger. We started with this idea of shattered queer romances, treating each one like a sacred relic, tracing their path from hushed confession to sky-rattling redemption, and reflecting on those deep wounds even as the bass trembles at 128-BPM.

You'll hear it right from the jump on "Crack of Velvet" – that quiet, almost secret confession, the whisper of torn letters over delicate nylon-string banjo arpeggios and the first, hesitant breath of what bloggers are already calling “the lung.” It’s that initial tightening in your ribs before the eventual release. Then "Glass Surge Gloria" just slams, turning that personal ache into a praise shouted across the floorboards. We even snuck in a surprise 3/4 bar, just to throw you off balance before the straight tempo snaps back, a dizzying triumph. You’ll feel that longing for recognition here. When "Confess, My Spark" comes on, it’s just one of us, alone with a trembling piano note, recounting childhood exile and first crushes in one unbroken breath, while the distant choir answers like foghorns. It’s raw, it’s real, it hurts.

But this isn’t just about sorrow. We built this soundscape to rise. On "Heelstorm Psalm," those accelerometer cassocks spark chords on every dip, turning the ballroom into a militant procession where each heel hit counts like a drumblast. It’s communal defense, bold defiance. And then there’s "Strike & Mend," the anthem everyone’s already chanting. That "Strike, break, breathe, mend" isn't just a lyric; it’s the whole damn process of healing, wrapped in a Giorgio-style bassline that just sinks into your bones, punctuated by our choir barking back. We wanted to make heartbreak feel like chrome, pain re-forged into armor. As you move through "Midveil Ascension," you can almost feel us climbing, each key-lift a spiraling staircase towards electric absolution, with the Seraphim Grinder starting to leak its strange, beautiful noise into the mix.

And then it just detonates. "Seraphim Grinder" itself – that hybrid pipe-organ and 303 rig – finally roars to life, spewing acid arpeggios while thirty voices chant Latin inventions over siren-swell pads. It’s pure, cathartic excess, a moment where every frequency band is packed to bursting, where queer divinity explodes. You’ll feel walls wobble, tears surge, a fierce victory coursing through your bones. But after the maelstrom, we gather the wreckage. "Blaze of Vows" is us tossing former pledges like confetti, letting warm synths rebuild the floor underfoot, a moment of rowdy gratitude. "Cascade of Kin" follows, a tribute to lineage and chosen family, with soloists recounting ballroom house history met by a tidal choir response, turning ancestry into a living roster. It’s a softer moment, but no less powerful, stirring fists upward even as it soothes.

By the time "Pose Redeemed" brings you back to that familiar raw mic crackle that opened the album, but now layered with a soft choir murmuring the hook, you’ll sense a different kind of closure. Wounds knit shut, but the floor remains ready for another procession. This whole album, from those aggressively side-chained kicks that make the choir gasp like a mechanical lung, to the stacked triadic clusters that shatter the audio spectrum like stained glass, it’s all about finding grace in the grit. It's us saying, "Your story, our story, it’s not just valid, it’s sacred." We built this, pushing the visceral pulse of ballroom against grand operatic storytelling, because these stories, our stories, deserve to be heard, to be felt, to be *lived* on this scale. We poured everything into this, every late night, every raw nerve, because maybe, just maybe, it’ll even make some noise beyond the usual spots. We think it might.

We're Vogaria. Opera voices, club rhythms, raw emotion. It's ballroom drama, our queer stories, loud and proud.