EartH Theatre, Hackney
“I would die for you.”
Kristin Hayter binds the tides of love and despair in her farewell bid to one of the most daring projects of late, Lingua Ignota: part classical, part poetry, ultimately devastating in its demise.
After recent news of Kristin Hayter’s intention for the demise of her breakout project, Lingua Ignota, these words seem somewhat eerie.
Having first witnessed her captivating performance, following her release of Caligula in 2019, packed into the cramped crucible of Hackney’s Oslo, tonight’s auditorium arrangement steeped with tiered seating highlighted the progression and prowess of her repertoire, one which indicates an act capable of engaging hundreds, if not, thousands of people.
This undoubtedly proved to be so. With effortless flexing between operatic and darkened, dramatic vocals, Hayter fed upon personal stories of death, love, religion grounded in her most recent release of Sinner Get Ready. Amidst a mixture of brooding piano refrains and playback tracks, a myriad of howling, wailing, crying succumbed to such heartrending moments of suffering and sadness, most notably ‘Pennsylvania Furnace’ and ‘Repent Now Confess Now’.
Progressing through such tales, Hayter sporadically restructures her bold lighting set-up, illuminated starkly by a handful of tripod-erected beacons of light, dragging them up and down each of the aisles to the audience's revered silence. The casting of these lights and Hayter’s voice invariably touches a darkened soul here and there, eclipsing the simmering atmosphere as a strikingly haunting cover of Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’ elicits tonight’s closure.
Under the circumstances surrounding the death of such an act, it seemed an apt conclusion for a musician as daring and boundary-pushing as Kristin Hayter - as we await her next conjuring force. For there’s no doubt that we felt this legacy tonight, indelibly marked by the mastery of Hayter’s gone-but-never-forgotten Lingua Ignota.
8.5/10
Lingua Ignota's latest LP, Sinner Get Ready, is out now can and be found below.
Photo is courtesy of Nicholas Sayers whose work can be found here.
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