Echo's Disintegration by Alliyah Enyo

Emerging from a live recording at St.Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in 2021, Alliyah Enyo’s ‘Echo’s Disintegration’ is a transformational project; a coded reflection on loss, metamorphosis and rebirth.

It’s a work of two parts, each incarnation informed by the parameters of the recording environment. In the initial live performance, Alliyah harnesses the organic echo and reverb formed by the vast open space of the cathedral. Her luminous vocals break through a dense sea of layered noise, a reverberating wailing drenched in heartache.

Her words are fractured and frayed, broken into segments, and enshrouded in mysticism. Yet through the ambiguity, there’s an innate spirituality to the work; iridescent melodies are heightened by the imposing presence of the surroundings.

The five studio tracks, made in retrospect, carry the live performance within the DNA of their reinterpreted sounds and loops. Recorded in Glasgow’s renowned Green Door Studio, constructed reel-to-reel tape loops further fragment and transform compositions, evoking the intoxicating tape feedback of Eliane Raidgue and the harrowing loops of William Basinski.

There’s a radiant clarity to the recordings, Alliyah’s voice implemented as the guiding instrument, the heady sensuality of her vocals layered and echoed in enchanting formation. Through the agony and longing, we reach reincarnation in the culminating euphoria of ‘the healer’. We’re left amongst the blissful reverberations of an awakened soul.

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'Dwelling in the lonely caves;
Yet still her love endures and grows on grief,
And weeping vigils waste her frame away,
Only her voice and bones are left; at last
Only her voice, her bones are turned to stone
So in the woods she hides and hills around,
For all to hear, alive, but just a sound...'
- Metamorphoses, Ovid

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All music written and produced by Alliyah Enyo.
'The Healer' rework by naafi, mixing by Philly Holmes.
Guitar on live recording by Gabriel Levine Brislin.
Live sound recording by Ana Betancourt.
Engineered by Ronan Fay.
Mastered for tape by Gaspard Casanova.
Cover photo by Miriam Cradock.
Costume by Amelia Wang.

Tracklist

1.	HYMN 4 empty club	7:26

2.	Choral Fragmentation latenights	2:04

3.	when my mind is quiet i drift 2 u water2wine	6:07

4.	Echo’s Disintegration Loops	4:06

5.	THE HEALER (rework by naafi)	5:43

6.	Echo’s Disintegration Live (St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral)	43:09

Credits

released November 4, 2022

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