Writer Paul F Cook recently reviewed Maud The Moth’s new album The Distaff describing it as ‘an album that is worth finding the time to lose yourself in its complexity and sheer drama‘ with MTM’s ‘exceptional voice which has with the mercurial dexterity to punch through granite as well as offer up a tenderness that is heart-breaking‘.
Given the richness of both the sound and lyrical content we approached Maud The Moth (aka Spanish-born, Scotland-based Amaya López-Carromero) to ask her for a track by track look at the album and she was kind to share the meanings and inspirations of her beautifully crafted release.
Canto de enramada
12:01am Outside a balcony with twisted iron bars. The air is warm and dry.
This piece is a reinterpretation of a traditional Castilian ”Canto de Enramada” a type of courtship songs which were traditionally sung by groups of young men to their love interests at dawn outside of their window (la ”ronda”). This introduction to the album explores themes of oppression, toxic love and the transfer of trauma between family individuals. From a compositional point of view it explores the possibilities of the vocoder as a tool which allows a solo singer to reimagine the vocal ensemble, multiplying and distorting the lead line and mirroring the aggressive and ‘gang-like’ nature of this tradition.
A temple by the river
01:00am A fallowing field. Flooded. Ruins.
Fully delving into distorted piano territory and borrowing from doom and black metal, this is a song about self loathing and inadequacy. The body as a vessel unable to hold familial expectations or to function in society. The need to create worlds through art for our true and uninhibited self to inhabit.
Exuviae
03:40am Summer. Scotland. Blue hour.
A garden of failed delights and earthly remains. Defeat. Insomnia. Depersonalisation.
Burial of the Patriarchs
06:00am On a boat inside a cave. Still dark waters rippling. A wet kitchen floor.
Named after a painting by Leonora Carrington by the same title, inspired by the concept of the biblical Caves of the Patriarchs, which are located south of Jerusalem and where myth sustains that the great patriarchs and matriarchs of Abrahamic religions were buried. Traditions and religious texts claim the caves to be the threshold to the garden of Eden and like many other sites has been used as a justification for a violence that sadly still continues today in the region. The roles are clearly divided and enforced in the name of a prosperity that benefits only a few. The loyal son, the submissive daughter. Grief as an identity can only perpetuate the suffering. Crumbs of dignity. I’d rather starve.
Siphonophores
Time stands still in oceanic depths.
Below the mirror-like dark waters breathes the dream collective. The gates of Eden open only in the arms of a lover. I wrote this song originally on guitar. During the same time period I wrote to the fields for my band healthyliving, and they have a strange connection. Here it is reworked to fit the album as necessary respite.
Despeñaperros
12:00 pm. Above ground. The exposed bare rock of the red mountain almost burns to the touch under the bright sun. Thirst and birds circling.
The Canyon of Despeñaperros is one of the main passes between the central plateau in Spain and Andalucía, in the South of Spain. A place loaded with historical and political significance which kept coming up in history class. As a child, I traversed the modern road in the back seat of my parent’s car often to go on trekking holidays. The vast beauty and desert-like nature of the area, as well as the name, which literally means “a place where dogs are thrown over a cliff”, and where “dogs” was used to refer to religious and political war prisoners, haunted me and instilled a morbid fascination which read as a threat in the darkest of times. How do humans become beasts?
O Rubor
6:00 pm. Vespers. Inside convent walls
A reinterpretation of the composition, by the same name, by the mystic and visionary nun Hildegard of Bingen. One of the few women able to dedicate her life to art in the XI century, even if through the lens of devotion. It features again vocoder, where the carrier waves are a string quintet and the modulator is the lead vocal, singing a reworked melody based on the original text.
Fiat Lux
11:00 pm Castrillo de la Vega (Burgos, Spain). A barn. faint light glowing through the keyhole.
Stories get passed down through generations and the truth bends like light around an edge. Pain births myth and folk gets reborn every time. Pain turning humans into beasts and beasts into humans. All abuse is born of the same seed and starts as a small weed in the back yard. This song features Scott playing saxophone for the first time in over twenty years. An instrument he inherited from his mother and which was his introduction to music.
Kwisatz Haderach
12:59 pm. A field in the highlands. A starry sky.
A reference to ”Dune’ by Frank Herbert who was very critical of the idea of the messiah. The shortening of the way, the perfect being, individuation. We are all but a work in progress, perfection is only a dream to enslave. This track was the only one written on a laptop, rather than as a song for piano and voice, and as such relies heavily on sound design. Seb also made the track come alive completely with the drum beat, which he made up on the spot while we were recording.
Huge thanks to Amaya/Maud the Moth for such a wonderful peek behind the curtain of this beguiling album.
Photographs by William Lacalmontie
Maud the moth socials: Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram | YouTube
Keep up to date with all new content on Joyzine via our
Facebook | Bluesky | Instagram | Threads | Mailing List