Lyra Pramuk

Back in 2020 I really loved Lyra’s debut album Fountain, but I hadn’t really thought about or listened to it much since then, so her just-released follow-up Hymnal is hitting me like a tonne of bricks.

And I think it’s not just the joy of rediscovery: this is an even better album than its predecessor. It’s denser - dizzyingly so at times - and more directly reminiscent of the vertically integrated Steve Reich minimalism that the first album vaguely gestured towards at times (while being less “minimalist” in a literal sense). There’s so much going on in these arrangements

Lyra also makes heavy use of strings here in addition to her voice, which gives everything a slightly ritualistic feel, though I might be allowing the album title to overdetermine my response on this point.

The density of these arrangements makes the moments of convergence into unexpected pop clarity feel more pronounced than before as well - see e.g. “Gravity” with its Katie Gately-like counterintuitively catchy cacophonous jig, or the way that “Solace” and “Ending” each resolve into melodic motifs that are profoundly moving, occupying a space somewhere between Kate Bush’s “Aerial” and Todd Edwards.

If this isn’t an AOTY contender I don’t know what is.

I listened to about half of this the other day and immediately loved the first few strings-forward tracks. I got less into it as it got darker and denser (a trajectory that might be entirely in my imagination tbh), but I think I just need to listen with my expectations recalibrated for what she's doing, i.e, not really a kind of 20c. minimalist chamber pop

OP is music to my ears, can't wait to check this out

I was wondering where I knew her name from - it turns out she did a track with Colin Self (who I absolutely adore, another Berlin-based artist pushing the boundaries of what vocal and choral music can sound like)

Have listened to her new album twice and definitely want to spend more time with it.

Some interesting discussion of the themes here:

https://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/composer-lyra-pramuk-wants-to-put-you-in-a-trance

omfg this is amazing!!!

i’m in a vortex of vocals and treated strings and i’m loving it

this is great, thank u ilx

I've definitely been slack on hearing the new album but the singles were sharp. A good artist!

I listened to about half of this the other day and immediately loved the first few strings-forward tracks. I got less into it as it got darker and denser (a trajectory that might be entirely in my imagination tbh), but I think I just need to listen with my expectations recalibrated for what she's doing, i.e, not really a kind of 20c. minimalist chamber pop

I think this trajectory is there, but it's reversed for the final two tracks ("Solace" and "Ending"), which both feel like the sun emerging from behind dark bank of clouds.

One of my randomly intense childhood memories is of seeing the Meryl Streep / Jack Nicholson film Heartburn when I was about 5 years old, and in particular of Carly Simon's "Coming Around Again" playing over the credits. I wouldn't have the words for it then, but I think it may have been the first time I consciously recognised an artistic evocation of resilience, of surviving through something traumatic and emerging stronger for it (the way the song quotes "Itsy Bitsy Spider" perhaps made this easier for 5 yr old me to grasp than it might have been otherwise).

These songs sound nothing like Carly obv, but they definitely have that same end-credits vibe. Their sweetness, their sense of hope, feels so tenuous and so hard-won.

Thanks for highlighting that Tim. I think I might have found my issue, which is that listening to this on headphones while trying to move through the city was triggering a near vertigo response. All those layered loops were literally dizzying! iIt's no less musically intense seated at home, but it's not making me queasy now. I am looking forward to those last two tracks though