For over a decade, Kathryn Ian and Joshua Levi Ian have collaborated musically under the name "Lux Interna." As Lux Interna, they draw from various folk music vernaculars and place them in conversation with more contemporary idioms such as drone, doom, and postpunk. Their work articulates an alternate and hallucinatory vision of Americana that musically foregrounds the fissures and crisis points within the "American narrative," rather than bringing them into them into harmonious resolution. In acceding to the absence of a coherent narrative, they are interested in exploring new possibilities of presence, reenchantment, and meaning.
Together they have released six studio albums to date, and have been represented by labels in Dresden, Germany (Eis und Licht), Brooklyn, NY (Projekt Records), and Auburn, California (Pesanta Urfolk). Over the years, Lux Interna has collaborated with musicians, including Kris Force (Amber Asylum), Adam Torruella (Vale of Tears/Pesanta Urfolk), Erica Stoltz (Sanhedrin), Mark Norris (The Eighties Matchbox B-line Disaster), Jeff Linsenmaier (Wovenhand), among others. Live, Lux Interna presents intense cycles of songs that explore the chiasm between flesh, light, divinity, world, and word.
Presently, Joshua and Kathryn's collaborative work is expanding from traditional songwriting/live performance. They are currently creating the New Wilderness Gospel, an experimental narrative that combines text, sound, video, and performance to re-envision the genre of apocalyptic literature in a contemporary idiom. Some apocalypses envision the historical end of the world; others are works of radical cosmology—acts of remapping the given world by way of a new imaginary. New Wilderness Gospel is a meditation on what shapes wild presence might take within a cultural imaginary premised on absence. It is a quintessentially American Apocalypse.
Visit luxinterna.com and newwildernessgospel.com for more information.
Swaying black lines blurred by. A seemingly endless grid crackling with energy. As they careened along the rough road, Joe was sure he could hear voices speeding with disembodied force through the power lines. Feel them moving through the air and the truck and his skin. Words and desires and hopes and banalities reaching from far off cities and plunging through the sun white oblivion of the desert before spilling into a thousand living rooms and offices and kitchens and bedrooms. A sonic deluge of ghosts searching for the warmth of receptive bodies.