As much as I love speeding and blasting The Haunted around SoCal, sometimes you need something more heady and all-encompassing. Leila Abdul-Rauf is known for a wide array of brilliant solo and group works within the underground and remains one of the music world’s most uninhibited creative thinkers. Calls From A Seething Edge is her latest solo endeavor, a remarkable heartfelt journey of mourning polycrisis whilst still holding space for dreams of a better world. It is a must-hear 2024 haunting release that will seep into your pores and remain with you for a long time, body music for the head and soul.
Morgan Y. Evans for Ghost Cult: This is an incredible record. It feels like an experience rather than “just an album,” if that makes sense. The whole time I was wondering if…how do I phrase this? It reminds me of like The Last Temptation Of Christ soundtrack somewhat in that you feel like this all overwhelming emotional or insightful crescendos. I couldn’t help but wonder if you made it to give others an experience or if the album was a reflection your own experience? I suppose it is always a sort of combination, but you went into heady waters here. Oh, how was the experience of the Arab American National Museum performance in Dearborn, Michigan on September 20th?
Leila: Great reference, and thank you! That’s a high compliment and something I try to achieve with every record I make. In my view, if an album doesn’t feel like an experience when you listen to it, then my job isn’t done. A true test is having to listen to something over and over again and not get completely sick of listening to it. I think it goes without saying that everything I write, record and produce is a reflection of my own experience. But that experience can be real or imagined. The show at the Arab American National Museum went rather well considering it was my first time performing material from the new album. Because I knew the whole set was being recorded, it was a great opportunity to be able to watch it later to see what the strong and weak points were, and give me ideas of how to improve it in the future. It’s also been a wonderful experience being involved with Arab.amp (the org that hosted the concert) events over the past year. It’s a great feeling to be part of this community, to be able to connect with people of similar cultural backgrounds to mine and have conversations that I’ve never been able to have before.
GCM: I remember hearing how when Sleep made Dopesmoker they used charts or something to remember it all. Your new record is not one long-ass song like that, but is very multifaceted. Was the composing of this all in your head fully formed or did it morph as you incorporated the myriad of other talents who you brought in (like the Harbinger Winds – Gridfailure & Megalophobe record we both guested on, for example)? You have worked with many bands over the years from Cardinal Wyrm to Vastum to Amber Asylum, but in your own work you can fully choose the direction the most. Though I wager some things do slightly shift from collaborating? I love albums such as this that feel like they could be returned to in years and remain unique, unlike ones simply reflecting a trend.
L: You know, sometimes I have the blueprint for a whole album set in my head before I start recording it. I think all five solo albums have had many concepts in place before a single note is recorded: it could be the album title, the artwork, or the overall song structure. I’d say my last album Phantasiai was more “fully formed” in my mind than Calls From A Seething Edge. I knew what the cover was going to look like and I knew I wanted the whole album to be written as two suites. But other than the album title and art, and which guest musicians I was going to ask to contribute, I had no idea what Calls… was going to turn into sonically. This time I didn’t want a fully formed outcome in my head like before, which allowed for more spontaneity. I like being able to approach an album differently every time so I don’t stay locked into a particular template.
GCM: The brilliant album cover made me think, of all things, of “Stairway to Heaven.” Not so much the actual Zep song but more the idea of like a common humanity elevating us to the stars if we’d choose that path, but instead we ruin it with hatefulness. It made sense after seeing it that the photo is by a psychoanalyst, haha. How did you meet Terrence? Also, paired with the album name of seething…it really works. I was talking recently with Marisa Prietto (of Wax Idols, Bizou, Some Embers fame) about feelings of overwhelming helplessness at the often interconnected multiple genocides- especially Gaza- unfolding right now and/or the surveillance state and gaslighting going on. How it can breed alienation and disconnect from people who are in denial and make you feel really alien. Seething is a solid word for not knowing the best way you can change anything but not wanting to lose all hope and become completely blackpilled.
L: For sure. I work at a psychoanalytic institute where I met Terrance McLarnan, who is a psychoanalyst member and one of the chairs of training there, as well as a visual artist and poet. He is one of the most kind and unique humans I’ve ever had the opportunity work with at this job. His fantastic art is actually displayed all over our office suite! Anyway, I came across a couple of pieces of his, I think through his website, and they struck some feelings in me, so I’m honored he was very willing to commission them to me. I agree they also work very well with the album title. I always have the cover art in mind when it comes to naming the album. I agree that “seething” was an appropriate description to describe this feeling of overwhelm, sifting through confusing language that’s thrown at us, also not knowing how to change anything while not wanting to lose hope.
GCM: “Mukhalafat” as a word…pardon my ignorance, it seems to have a lot of meanings when I looked it up. I was wondering what it means to you in regards to this song, and also how you approached the vocals vs. instrument ratio to this album. I admire your ability to let the music breathe, which has sometimes been something I have struggled with as a vocalist over the years who “has to” get my pent-up scribbled lyrics out there. But you have to remember to let the song and music accentuate things as well without smothering with constant vocals. It is more cinematic to have balance.
L: Just a disclaimer that although I grew up around my grandparents and father’s family speaking Arabic in the house, I don’t really know more than a few phrases here and there, and maybe some Quran chapters I had to memorize as a child. Mukhalafat is a word I came across while reading different articles online, and variations of the word can be found in several languages including Arabic, Hindi and Urdu. Yes, it can take on slightly different meanings depending on its context: antagonism, opposition, contradiction, disobedience, etc. All of these descriptors sum up so much of how I felt while making this album, so I used it for this instrumental piece, which features dulcimer synth melodies that came to me as I was playing around with this sound. Giving compositional breathing space and creating a balance between vocals and instruments is indeed very key to my process, and something I’ve given much attention to on all of my albums. That said, Calls is probably the most vocal-forward album to date, since the previous albums have been mostly 50/50 vocal/instrumental.
GCM: Can you discuss the “Summon/The Summoned” interplay between those track names?
L: The album’s closer “The Summoned” is basically a reprise of the intro track “Summon.” Although there was another song on the album that was written first, “Summon” was the first song I worked on when I knew an album and its concepts were starting to come together, and it also relates most closely to the overall album title and themes. As this album progressed, there was more and more variation between the songs and I was concerned that the album would feel too all over the place. So writing “The Summoned” was my solution to make the whole album feel like a complete journey in a world unto itself. It recaps “Summon” and the melodic themes (including Gregory Hagan’s viola and Derrick Vella’s (Tomb Mold) acoustic guitar solo) of most of the other songs on the album in the last several seconds, in an almost “life flashing before your eyes” fashion preceding death. It’s also a song that when performed live has lot of room for improv, so it’s adaptable.
GCM: How much do you think memory and personal bias interferes in the average person’s ability to experience art in pre-determined emotional ways? It is strange how, for example, people go to familiar genres for a “hit” of comfort like a drug but balk at the chore of having to be vulnerable and open themselves to more outsider or demanding works- even when the reward is so much greater at times. Not that low-brow pop or rock can’t also have charms, so to speak. I am just constantly startled by how many walls people often keep up.
L: Memory and personal bias play a part in everything we do. I think it is partially human nature to stick with what you’re comfortable with and we all do it to a point, especially the older we get. I guess what’s considered “low brow” vs “challenging” is a matter of perspective. There’s social influence too, like what your friends are into will influence what and how much you’re willing to explore or take risks, and if you go against what’s accepted within your social circle, you face possible ostracization which is scary and daunting for most people. Another factor is timing: there are days when I have more walls up than on others, and so I could listen to an album one day and not relate to at all, but on another day, I’ll listen to it again and it totally clicks, because I’m in a different headspace for whatever reason. With some people this happens more than with others, depending on who they are, how they relate to the world and how much art plays into it. It’s a finicky, inconsistent, and ever-evolving thing, this music-listening business.
GCM: What was your headspace or goal going into the “Crimes of the Soul” video. How was it working with Gregory C. Hagan and David Brenner on the piece?
L: I loved working on this video with David and Gregory. “Crimes of the Soul” is the bleakest, grittiest song on the album so I knew that David’s aesthetic would be the right fit for it, since we’ve collaborated on other videos in the past. The lyrics to the song deal with the conundrum of war and genocide: is it part of human nature? If so, how much does that matter, and can we rise above it? Or are we stuck watching the world fall to pieces because we’re too powerless as individuals to change the powers that keep the war machine in place? I wanted to capture these ideas in visual form and David brilliantly collaged together some evocative war footage which captured the vision perfectly.
Gregory is my partner, who also plays viola on the album, and he came upon this beautiful rose garden close to where we live, and suggested it would be an ideal place to film some shots of me. I liked the idea of juxtaposing these extreme opposites of wartorn Gaza with serene shots of me in a rose garden to exemplify the illusions that the privileged among us have that the world is a peaceful place while so much of the world is dealing with unfathomable violence. But you can also see it as the world has a lot of beauty and a lot of ugliness and horror and we have to hold this all simultaneously in our hearts and minds throughout our whole lives. The roses and other flowers to me also symbolized grief and mourning, like flowers you would see at a funeral, and there were scenes of me dressed like a widow. So the beauty can also point to something grievous and devastating. The boldness of the song and video made me want to make it the lead single of the album for maximum impact and also showcase the new creative directions I’ve been taking, and I think it worked well.
THANK YOU!!
Buy Leila’s new album and merch here:
https://leilaabdulrauf.bandcamp.com/album/calls-from-a-seething-edge
Check out our review of Leila’s new album here:
ALBUM REVIEW: Leila Abdul-Rauf – Calls From a Seething Edge
MORGAN Y. EVANS
Follow Morgan’s work here: