LINGUA IGNOTA: A Harsh Reality Made Human
Kristin Hayter has seen a side of life that very few people in this world would dare admit to, let alone channel into their creative output. As the brains behind outfit LINGUA IGNOTA, she has taken one of the most horrific ordeals a human being can experience in domestic abuse and fashioned one of the most powerful albums of the year in Caligula, a follow up to her previous efforts Let the Evil of His Own Lips Cover Him and the truly savage All Bitches Die. For Hayter herself though, this was more than just sharing her story to others.
“This kind of music is my healing process,” she explains. “I haven’t really done it in a professional setting or a more kind of ‘traditional’ healing way. At the time that I was dealing with all this, I was going to school in Providence, and it became a really big part of my work in my graduate studies. From there, I started performing it around town in the DIY, punk and noise scenes and it slowly grew.”
Baring one’s soul in such an extreme way naturally comes with its own set of obstacles, and Hayter is refreshingly honest about her worries as the project began to take off “I definitely think it was easier to do when I didn’t think that anybody would hear it, or that anybody would be listening. When I first started, it was mostly just for me and for whoever happened to be around at the time. But at this point, I know a lot of people are listening. So this past few months has been very interesting; it’s very strange to submit this sort experience for the world to judge.”
For all her understandable concerns, the world has adjudicated overwhelmingly in her favour. Caligula is both a raw, unrelenting barrage of anguish and suffering and a soft, loaded delivery of spite towards one of Hayter’s previous abusers. It’s not an easy listen in the slightest and doesn’t let up even with repeated listens. Given the unpredictability of the record, you have to wonder just how Kristin could even begin to approach this, even if it’s just on pure instinct. She’s quick to dismiss this though. “There’s far less intuitive stuff on the record than you might think. I take a very postmodern approach: there’s this huge kind of catalogue of references and various sources that are used and put together in this pastiche or collage to make the record. So it’s very much deconstructed, and then everything gets kind of re assembled from this collagist’s perspective.”
One of the more prominent reference is religion, which is unsurprising given that Hayter not only went to a parochial school in America and had a Catholic upbringing, but LINGUA IGNOTA is the name given to a historical language created by Christian mystic Hildegard of Bingen in the 12th century. Although describing herself as an atheist for many years, she has recently developed a renewed interest in her childhood faith and this has been reflected in her works. When asked about whether this is purely for academia or if she is developing a faith again, she once more answers with eloquence, although takes a moment to choose her words carefully. “I do struggle with my faith. I’m sure at this point that I’m an atheist – there’s intrinsically a spiritual or faith-based aspect in the music. But like you said, I think that the aesthetics and academic considerations are most at the forefront; that imagery being really significant to me, because it was part of my youth. But it is a complex relationship; I’m not really sure what I would call it right now.”
Taking into account her ordeals in life, there’s no surprise that she questions the existence of God, something she agrees with when queried. However, she is fully aware that she doesn’t want to write about her experiences through music forever, and that the topic of the Almighty may feature later down the line. “One thing about making work about trauma or abuse, it doesn’t work if you’re not doing it honestly, it doesn’t work if it’s not authentic – it’s actually incredibly gross and unnecessary. The past few records have really been me processing my experiences, and I hope to be done with the experiences and moving into something different are moving out. For sure, I don’t want to be making work about abuse forever. And would love to be able to, at some point make works is just about beauty, or God or love or something. But as long as it feels necessary to keep doing it, I will; as soon as it feels like I’m trying to do it, I’ll stop.”
Because of the territory that Hayter is exploring, it’s natural that she’s inadvertently become a spokesperson for those who have gone through the same tribulations as her; she confirms that someone comes up to her almost every day to thank her for helping them through their own strife.. She’s taking it all in her stride though, “I come from just being an artist, mostly, and I’m kind of politicised a little bit more than I wanted to be, but I definitely feel like I have an obligation to, to be helpful and to help other people who’ve had experiences like mine, who come to me and tell me.”
It takes courage of the highest degree to portray something as horrendous as what Kristin Hayter has experienced, but LINGUA IGNOTA has not only given her the perfect outlet but also a subsequent soapbox in a world still coming to terms with the true scale of domestic abuse in the wake of #MeToo. Caligula might be an uncompromising and, at times, distressing listen, but there isn’t a single person doing this sort of thing on the planet right now, and for that this classically trained multi-instrumentalist from Rhode Island deserves every bit of success coming her way.
How much did the #MeToo movement influence on your decision to write about your experiences?
Kristin: Actually, not a huge amount. It seems like we’re just living in a time where there’s this cumulative effect of all of this horrible political climate that’s, you know, global at this point. And these things just sort of coincided, and a lot of the systems that have been in place seem to breaking down, or people seem to not be willing to accept them anymore. So it didn’t really come out of that, or I wasn’t inspired to do anything because of #MeToo. But it definitely kind of all happened at once.
Does Caligula take its name from the tyrannical Roman Emperor?
Kristin: For sure. But the record is not meant to be about his story, of course; I was thinking about, you know, interpersonal tyranny and abuse, as well as in our communities, and as well as kind of in a larger global sense at the moment.
Is there one particular moment or song that you on the record that you found harder than the rest to sing about the record?
Kristin: Do You Doubt Me Traitor was very difficult to record. It was one of the last songs that I recorded, right after I’d finished like a 40-something date tour with THE BODY last summer. So my voice was just in the pits, it was just gone; I’d gone through a nasty personal experience right before we left for tour as well; naturally when you’re on tour you just go and go until it’s over. When we got back, I just kind of like collapsed and the song came out of that. I think I recorded most of the vocals on the floor of my closet with the worst, most basic, gross, dynamic mic that I have! So yeah, that was a hard one. I think that comes through in the song though; the screaming and the vocals on that song are very real, it was hard for me to listen to it for a while.
How do you decide what parts to sing and what parts to scream?
Kristin: I think it depends on the context or the dynamics of the song, or what the song needs to be doing at any particular moment, with the ebb and flow or weird juxtapositions that I like to throw in there. A lot of times though I like to sing the more brutal lyrics and have the more kind of difficult or graphic stuff be quieter and have thing that are more superfluous screamed; I like to create a weird juxtaposition there as well.
Given your background as a multi-instrumentalist, and certainly come from a classical background, do you feel that, as your career progresses, your musical output won’t be as harsh or do you think that’s always going to remain?
Kristin: I think that it could go a bunch of different ways. I’m interested in pursuing, a very specific harsher sound but I’m also interested in moving away from, you know, the metal world and the noise world and moving into something like completely different that people haven’t really heard before. We’re just using the amalgam of styles in a different way, just kind of trying to reinvent things or do something different re-framing old models. We’ll see what happens.
CALIGULA is out now via Profound Lore Records.
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