Edinbourgh, UK based Avant-Garde/Experimental project Maud The Moth led by Amaya López-Carromero published the official visualizer for the third single “Exuviae,” taken from upcoming album “The Distaff” due out on February 21, 2025 via LaRubia Producciones. Watch the video through the YouTube player below:
Amaya states: “Exuviae was written at dawn, after a sleepless night where defeat felt raw and hyperreal. The summer in Scotland is strange and the sun barely sets; A soft blue glow substituting night and weighing your chest down. Through the window, I could see the sky being torn and felt myself split.
At my feet; my old self, my skin: aglow and red.“
Amaya uses the alter-ego of Maud the moth as a symbolic entity through which to channel and process life experiences, and in particular, themes of uprootedness, identity construction and trauma.
“The Distaff” alludes to the wooden stick used in antiquity to reel thread from a mass of fibres. This object appears in the collective imagination as the symbol of the ‘virtuous woman,’ one of the ideals generated by authoritarian and patriarchal societies, and the axis around which much of the trauma and guilt surrounding femininity revolves.
The title of the album is inspired, in part, by one of the earliest examples of women’s literature: the poem of the same name written by the Greek poet Erinna. In this poem, the author laments her friend Baucis‘ loss of individuality and agency after her marriage, as a price to pay in exchange for security and acceptance in the eyes of society.
The album exists in an ethereal yet violent universe, full of aesthetic overlaps and dreamlike anachronisms. Folk, re-imagined, sits at the table with Maud The Moth‘s usual motley sonic collection. With a sonic essence impossible to categorise, the glimpses of musical genre only offer a glimpse into the artistic interests of Amaya, an active participant in the European underground scene (as part of groups such as healthyliving, among other projects).
With a darker, more exposed and raw sound than any of her previous studio work, the album features stellar collaborators such as Seb Rochford (Patti Smith, Polar Bear, Sons of Kemet, Pulled by Magnets, etc.) on drums, Alison Chesley (Helen Money) on cello, Fay Guiffo on violin and Scott McLean (Ashenspire, healthyliving, Falloch) on guitar and other instruments.
The album contains nine songs originally written as pieces for acoustic piano and voice, in a purely singer-songwriter style and paying special attention to the compositional and narrative arc. Co-produced and recorded by Scott and Amaya in different studios in the UK between January and June 2024, thanks to funding from Creative Scotland, the aim was to capture the dynamics and expressiveness of free solo performance.
All preorder links here: https://linktr.ee/maudthemoth
Tracklist:
01. Canto de enramada
02. A temple by the river
03. Exuviae
04. Burial of the patriarchs
05. Siphonophores
06. Despeñaperros
07. O rubor
08. Fiat lux
09. Kwisatz Haderach
Credits:
Amaya López-Carromero / Piano, Voice, Psaltery, Hyperpiano and Percussion
Scott McLean / Guitar, Moog and Saxophone
Sebastian Rochford / Drums and Percussion
Alison Chesley (Helen Money) / Cello
Fay Guiffo / Violin
Sound Design by Scott McLean and Amaya López-Carromero
