Pluperfect Mind, by Dear Laika

Pluperfect Mind

by Dear Laika

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Cassette + Digital Album
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dearlaika.bandcamp.com/album/pluperfect-mind

Limited Edition Cassettes
Glitter Shells with Tape Labels

Album Imagery, Design, and Layout by Isabelle Thorn.

Includes unlimited streaming of Pluperfect Mind via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

ships out within 69 days

edition of 100

£10 GBP or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
FOR NON-UK/EU BUYERS:
dearlaika.bandcamp.com/album/pluperfect-mind

'Crimson Cheeks' [marbled cloudy clear + opaque burgundy] Vinyl inside a gloss-coated jacket featuring a holographic symbol. A full-color printed inner sleeve features album lyrics.

Album Imagery by Isabelle Thorn.
Design and Layout by Isabelle Thorn & Adam Downey.

Download card included.

Made by NNA Tapes.

Includes unlimited streaming of Pluperfect Mind via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

ships out within 69 days

edition of 200 14 remaining

£20 GBP or more

1.	Lilac Moon, Reflected Sun 07:10	buy track
2.	Guinefort's Grave 05:31	buy track
3.	Ubi Sunt 04:41	buy track
4.	Phlebotomy 03:17	buy track
5.	Inward Life (We Exist) 03:35	buy track
6.	Black Moon, Lilith 05:10	buy track
7.	Asleep in Wildland Fire 05:04	buy track
8.	Quinta del Sordo 02:45	buy track
9.	Pluperfect Mind 08:21	buy track

about

Pluperfect Mind, the label debut from the 23-year-old UK-based musician Dear Laika (a.k.a. Isabelle “Izzy” Thorn), is an extraordinary creation — a beautiful and singular oddity which exists in the liminal space between dreamworlds and a blurry, watercoloured version of reality. It is a reflection on the past few years of Izzy’s life, during which she sought solitude in the North Wessex Downs while beginning her gender transition.

A consistent theme of the album is isolation, both from other people and from parts of herself, and the intention to overcome anxieties and reconnect. Pluperfect Mind also chronicles aspects of Izzy’s own transgender experience, from the painful tedium of waiting for hormone treatment to the elation of finally inhabiting a body that feels right. It captures the sense of being cast adrift between an uncomfortable past and an uncertain future, living outside of heteronormativity and caught in “queer time”. Izzy’s mercurial songwriting aims to suspend the perception of time, allowing the listener to inhabit an immersive half-lit world of mystical landscapes, volatile atmospheres and shifting rhythms.

A meditative album that grows richer with multiple listens, lush alien choir voices float in on “Phlebotomy” creating an intoxicating, ethereal sense of calm, while on “Guinefort’s Grave” we hear distant thunderclaps smudged over electronic fuzz and warbling synths. "Inward Life (We Exist)" opens with a piano, prepared with screws between its strings, tolling like a church bell, before blossoming into an elegy with yearning violins; elsewhere, descriptions of lilac moons, mouldy air, fauns and smoke-engulfed fields create an atmospheric folk opera. “Black Moon, Lilith” is the emotional zenith of the album, a song about desire, its reckoning and its actualization from a trans lesbian perspective that culminates in the triumphant sound of a string ensemble glittering and warped like holographic foil. Pluperfect Mind builds towards a seraphic finale in the title track, in which a beatific choral tapestry emerges from a sea of whispers and sighs and is finally consumed in a cloud of ecstatic, smouldering drone.

Having grown up singing in church choirs and listening to classical music, those influences can still be heard in Izzy’s music now. Although she rarely listens to classical music nowadays, the rich harmonies of composers such as Messiaen, Finzi and Ravel have left an indelible mark on her own writing, and she freely mutates samples of Bach and Beethoven beyond recognition. During her transition, having to make the shift from baritone to alto, she was captivated and inspired by the expressive intensity of Kate Bush, Vashti Bunyan and FKA twigs; her own clear, keening vocals soar throughout Pluperfect Mind, breathy and otherworldly. She whispers French poetry and lilts over lines about warped memories, exploring her inner world with gentle ruminations on love, hormone therapy and dreams.

Pluperfect Mind is a beguiling collection of vivid lyrics and celestial song, bound together with digital glitch and field recordings. Comparisons can be made to Björk, Tim Hecker or Bat For Lashes, but ultimately, Dear Laika’s exploration of the experimental and the mystical builds something intricate and intimate that is truly original and bewitching.

credits

released October 29, 2021

Dear Laika sings and plays piano, prepared piano, violin, and Roland Juno 106s

Produced by Dear Laika

Additional Production on “Guinefort’s Grave” and “Black Moon, Lilith” by Ruairi O’Brien

Mixed by Ruairi O’Brien

Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studio (NY)

Huge thanks and love to Heather, Ruairi, Freya, Olive, Emily, Kiran, Lori, Rosa, Doug, Sonia, Josh, all of caroline, David, Pablo, Billy, Shelley, and my parents.

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about

Memorials of Distinction London, UK

Record Label.

Spewing morbid noise out into the void.

modrecords.co.uk

Mix series:
www.mixcloud.com/memorialsofdistinction/

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