Next month, performance artist, vocalist and instrumentalist Kristin Hayter (aka Lingua Ignota) will release the follow-up to 2019’s epic and cavernous CALIGULA, titled SINNER GET READY. Thursday, she shared “PERPETUAL FLAME OF CENTRALIA,” the album’s second single, following the delicately forlorn “PENNSYLVANIA FURNACE.” Wrapped around bare, striking piano chords, Hayter’s voice, at times only a whisper, feels ice cold as she deciphers feelings of anger into religious imagery. The haunting instrumentation and Hayter’s comparatively hushed vocal delivery cause “PERPETUAL FLAME OF CENTRALIA” to feel almost like a sacred hymn as it recalls quiet, painful divination.
Arriving with the track is a video shot by Emily Birds in South Philadelphia, featuring the artist in several ornate and elegant costumes designed by Ashley Rose Couture, given the prompt “the blood of Jesus.” Of the collaboration, Hayter says:
I first saw Ashley’s work long before I was able to wear it, and it spoke to me as a longtime fan of the aesthetics and theory of fashion. Her designs transform the wearer into something outside themselves, armor that allows one to embody fantasy or nightmare. Working collaboratively with Ashley has been a dream, I have been able to explore the ideas of my record with wearable art. I chose to wear her mask on the cover of SINNER GET READY because it held the sharp dichotomy of my music; it was chaste and erotic, exquisite and grotesque. For the “PERPETUAL FLAME OF CENTRALIA” video, the expressive capacity of her garments are meditated upon in juxtaposition to the stark, desolate quality of my song. It is the material vs. the immaterial, and the result is languid and dreamy and wonderfully claustrophobic.
Below, check out the video for “PERPETUAL FLAME OF CENTRALIA.” You can preorder SINNER GET READY, out Aug. 6 on Sargent House, right here.
