Album by Holy Matter

9 tracks |23:00 run time

Releasing 10/04/2024

Available on: Vinyl, CD, Digital Download, Streaming

Holy Matter is the pseudonym of Leanna Kaiser, a musician and experimental filmmaker living in Los Angeles. Beauty Looking Back is her debut album, featuring nine songs that draw from psych-folk, hypnagogic pop, and experimental noise. Originally from St Louis, Kaiser co-founded the ambient duo Frances With Wolves before moving out west to study filmmaking, eventually making music videos with Jessica Pratt, Allegra Krieger, Dean Wareham, Papercuts, and more.

Named after a painting by Hishikawa Moronobu, Beauty Looking Back finds Kaiser exploring the changing seasons of life and the passage of time. Whether through the autumnal psych-folk of “Autumn’s Envy”, the tropicalia of “Wishing Well”, the hypnagogic pop of “Eve’s Hollywood”, or the cathartic crescendo of “Lore Green and Blue”, Kaiser explores the concepts of time unfolding and moving in a circle throughout the album. “It seemed an appropriate title because this is a collection of backwards looks, a survey of emotions and moments, written between 2020 and 2023. I think a lot about the past, how a life is built up of all that came before it. There is a comfort in nostalgia, as the future can seem so uncertain. But really everything is cyclical, when it comes down to it” says Kaiser.

Fittingly, the album features contributions from Kaiser’s collaborators past and present, drawing from both her circle in Los Angeles and her origins in St Louis. Former Frances With Wolves bandmate Andy Kahn contributes keyboards, guitar, and bass, while Kate Bollinger contributes backing vocals, and Kaiser’s partner Matt Popieluch (Big Search) contributes classical guitar, 12-string guitar, and violin. One song in particular, “The Spirit of St Louis” ties it all together in a particularly meaningful way, “Andy, Matt and I are all playing guitar at the same time, so it’s such a mixture of my past and present, and all our parts really intertwine in this lovely soft way. It’s about coming to terms with myself, acknowledging past parts of me that haven’t been so pleasant and trying to make sense of it all” says Kaiser.

Meanwhile, executive producer David Glasebrook (Patti Smith, Michael Nau, Sugar Candy Mountain) mixed & mastered the album, bringing a few of his collaborators into the fold as well, including drummer Raphi Gottesman (Sonny & The Sunsets) and upright bassist Josh Housh (Michael James Tapscott). Although the bulk of the album was tracked by Kaiser at her home studio in Los Angeles, a handful of overdubs were done at Santo Recording in Oakland, CA and at The Sinkhole in St Louis with engineer Matt Stuttler.

Looking back on the album Kaiser says, “Holy Matter comes from Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers, which had a big impact on me after the first read. There’s one passage that has stayed with me, since - a page with the repeated mantra “I change; I am the same.”  This, I would say, is the best description of what this album is about.”

Royal Oakie Records is proud to release Beauty Looking Back on October 4th 2204, with a UK/EU physical release to follow on December 6th 2024.