Multi-disciplinary artists d have a tendency to combine the art forms they work within, or, even more so, there is a distinct influence of one onto the other that crops up, and very often the results are quite compelling.
Leanna Kaiser, who, when in her music mode performs as Holy Matter is one such artist as she is also an experimental filmmaker. That combination of music and moving images is quite audible in her debut solo album Beauty Looking Back.
The title itself is influenced by another art form, painting, as she picked it up from a painting by Hishikawa Moronobu. At the same time, Holy Matter as a moniker was picked up from Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers, another reference from another art form.
Kaiser initially started out as a part of a St. Louis ambient duo Frances With Wolves, and again, those cinematic elements often heart in music of ambient artists is to be felt throughout, her album here.
Yet, Kaiser moves into a more structured song form here, bringing elements of dream and bedroom pop throughout her songs, adding loose, ambient elements to grace the songs, something that seems to come naturally to Kaiser.
“Beauty Looking Back seems an appropriate album title because this is a collection of backward looks, a survey of emotions and moments, written between 2020 and 2023. I think a lot about the past, and 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.
That dreamy quality that is often an essential element to all of nostalgia is something that seems to have come instinctively to Kaiser, as the music here has that effortless quality that comes when you are able to easily transform your emotions and reminisces into music. An excellent debut.
