Holy Other

Lieve is a Dutch language feminine name derived from the Godelieve ("dear to God"), a female 11th-century Flemish saint. Holy Other’s second album is a celestial, elegiac communing with the denizens of the stars, looking up and out asking questions to answer the complex perplexities down within.

Returning after a nine-year absence, ‘Lieve’ is a sound-prose and concept album, one that utilises the environment, place and space as an instrument, walls, nooks, crannies acting as sound-vacuum gleaners to tap into and channel, the eternal/external brought into an infernal/internal realm.

Like winds that blow in and past, whispering sweet somethings (or anything or nothings) to the subconscious, stirred recollections that stalk the present, all-together-eal emissions that cement the physical and foment the metaphysical. Histories are stories that lay dormant until roused, submerged silhouettes that trail behind and lay in wait for (re)activation.

Inspired by a stay at Bidston Observatory on The Wirral, Merseyside, and borne from recordings made within the building (and including the voice of NYX’s Sian O’Gorman, violin from Simmy Singh and saxophone from Daniel Thorne) the album was then cut, manipulated and pieced like a yet-to-be realised jigsaw in the mind’s eye. Wordless incantations open to wild interpretation with song titles that play with textual comprehensions (‘Refuse’; ‘Bough Down’). ‘Absolutes’ has an oriental ambience, a tilted axis, unsteady praxis, the exoticness of the East counterbalancing the wayward West, and forever the twain must meet.

The industrial grindings of ‘Refuse’ ambiguously ponder the meaning of the term, is it in relation to deny, reject or resist of or rubbish, detritus, waste? Either/or.

‘Lieve’ is a fascinating experience that blends industry and art, filigree and heart. A masterly performance of musique concrete mixing.