back to
Anti- Records
We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

The Opening, Or Closing Of A Door

by Kristine Leschper

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $8 USD  or more

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Artist exclusive Maroon vinyl color. Limited to 500. Standard weight. Art & design by Bradley Pinkerton. Includes 11x17 lyric sheet.

    Includes unlimited streaming of The Opening, Or Closing Of A Door via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days

      $26.98 USD or more 

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Black vinyl. Standard weight. Art & design by Bradley Pinkerton. Includes 11x17 lyric sheet.

    Includes unlimited streaming of The Opening, Or Closing Of A Door via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days

      $24.98 USD or more 

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    4 panel digipak. Art & design by Bradley Pinkerton.

    Includes unlimited streaming of The Opening, Or Closing Of A Door via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days

      $11.98 USD or more 

     

  • Athens Resonates 7"
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Recorded live to 1/2” 2 track tape at Chase Park Transduction by producer / recording engineer Drew Vandenberg. Pressed at Classic City Vinyl Works, no two records are the same. They range from baby blue, to forest greens and beautiful yellows and oranges. Like the recording, each record is an unrepeatable captured moment in time.

    Side A: Something Like An Exit
    Side B: Angst In My Pants

    The album cover was designed by Abby Deschits and layout by JLP and the jackets were hand screen printed on 65lb test paper at Ruby Sue Graphics. Our logo was designed by Charles Glade.

    Limited edition of 300

    Includes unlimited streaming of The Opening, Or Closing Of A Door via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

1.
something like an exit an entrance living in life living in love living in light wondering where are my edges vision of my unfinished sentence in the greatest of all coincidences you’re no longer angry scrubbing the grit from the sandpaper watching someone you love would i select this animation of things i have said given the chance all we invent lending itself to the vision of some unflinching bet ultimate enactment i cant tell the difference so i guess i would select this animation of things i have said given the chance all we invent lending itself to the vision of some unflinching bet ultimate enactment i can’t tell the difference so i guess
2.
big sound in the clearing spin me into something reaching with her right hand my elbow big house in the clearing push me toward the feeling near the crossing sleight of hand bent my shadow summer comes sister in her prairie dress snaking through the branches it’s like a picture i think one where we’re untouched by the future i think of us as something like a microscope tight rope frantic pollen scatter it paints your lovely pattern and curves along the pavement forms a giant mouth and sings this song to you hope i get the notes right soon summer comes sister in her prairie dress snaking through the branches it’s like a picture i think one where we’re untouched by the future i think of us as something like frantic pollen scatter it paints your lovely pattern and curves along the pavement forms a giant mouth and sings this song to you hope i get the notes right
3.
Figure and I 02:22
figure and i it’s not always hard to find time to be alive figure and i it’s not always hard to
4.
Blue 02:53
given room the sun goes like it has to i am velvet blue when the trees move given room my eyes go where they have to you are split in two when the light moves shapeless in the dark you pirouette up moving towards me in the wild of outside right on time right on time right on time right on time right on time right on time
5.
6.
secret silent decided at last pretty parchment apartment imagined took it talking a tongue in your laugh writhe and wrestle around it again writhe and wrestle alive writhe and wrestle alive writhe and wrestle writhe and wrestle alive alive to be discovered i am cold only on the outside and tired as always to be a person without love, it is pointless he tells me all the time into the future teach me how to remember or teach me to forget
7.
Carina 05:04
you sat a million miles inside yourself clearly i’ve crossed a line for the first time in five months i stopped pretending to try would you stop pretending to try ? my heart made a sound like ten thousand horses galloping over the edge of myself into hell into hell into hello how are you it certainly has been a while just you and me my baby and our mutual crippling self doubt did you ever touch its arm and feel your voice go flat did you ever touch your own arm and feel the universe collapse do you hear me when i laugh can you hear me when i laugh ? i watched you burning bright like a star too close to death exploding every instant to wash away our debts you’ll never find me guilty although these crimes were mine oh don’t be so foolish i’m disappearing quickly transparent as a moonbeam as tiny as our story
8.
couldn’t shake the thought of other hands clutching at the freckles on your legs talking in your sleep when you first said you loved me crushed between your teeth the words not meant for me i felt something grow sharp inside my belly entertaining ghosts between your bedsheets i’d like to die a thousand times in your sweater already died a hundred times this winter just bury me bury me in clover bury me beneath the songs you sang to her always is a dirty word to say always is a dirty word to say
9.
have all that you never wanted and so much more
10.
Ribbon 03:25
if you give me the sign i’ll take my knife to the ties of your ribbons holding something like a light inside in the weight of your design bearing edge of my desire forms another image in your watercolor blessing eyes in the weight of your design bearing edge of my desire forms another image in your watercolor blessing eyes don’t give up you know i love to see you grow in the arms of all you underwater i can say i want to see it grow don’t give up you know i love to see you grow in the arms of all you underwater i can say i want to see it grow every love i love to love
11.
Compass 04:25
take your time friend it’s hard enough to want it bent like a champion buried in the margins tell me what’s next friend spin me like a compass hand of constant searching give it time friend if there’s beauty then you’ll find it check my progress stretch me past my limits hand of constant learning softening my edges all the time softening my edges waking up waking up to find the sun replaced by a beautiful sun waking up waking up waking up found me at my entrance steady as a compass
12.
there is a legibility to the opening or closing of a door there is a possibility to the opening or closing of a door
13.
Thank You 01:38
thank you for being my friend things were much harder before you my love is for you my love is for me too thanks to you i know i can keep going thank you for listening many of us wanting just to listen to you too

about

Out of chaos, the universe emerged, and from chaos a person can emerge, too. Kristine Leschper isn’t being hyperbolic when she describes a sensation of “being born” when a culmination of events, both personal and global, catalyzed in her “an understanding of how to relinquish control in a big way, and from that, a new sense of connectedness, transition, and impermanence.” She explains her desire to cultivate work in the spirit of the New World Poets, where in the words of June Jordan there exists “a reverence for the material world that begins with a reverence for human life, an intellectual trust in sensuality as a means of knowledge and of unity.”

Leschper’s The Opening, Or Closing Of A Door, due March 4 via ANTI/Epitaph, is a paean to the sensory world. It’s the first Leschper has released under her given name, having retired the moniker Mothers after eight years of performing and releasing music under it. Though both projects are guided by Leschper’s idiosyncratic approach to songwriting, they couldn’t sound more different. While Mothers drew inspiration from the stark, skeletal sounds of post-punk and contemporary folk, Leschper’s new work is practically baroque, integrating an array of synthesizers, strings, woodwinds, and over a dozen percussive instruments. “Earlier work didn’t involve recording as part of the writing process, recordings were simply made as a document of something that had been written and rehearsed. I have since discovered a deep affection for home recording and sound exploration, finding that I thrive in those rabbit holes of texture, timbre, rhythm, which can add so much complexity to the emotionality of a composition.”

The at-home recording process gave Leschper freedom to set her personal ethos to music divorced from the pressure of an audience. As she worked on The Opening, Or Closing Of A Door, the constellation of ideas that had guided her personal transformation began to cohere into something communicable through music. “My pleasure lives in the poetics of democracy -- in the liberatory words of June Jordan, in the humanitarian performances of Bread and Puppet Theatre. Puppetry, like poetry, is a distillation of complex ideas into absolute essentials. With these songs, I wanted to explore themes of longing, encouragement, connectedness, these things that are both straightforward and complex, ubiquitous and vital. It is the foundation of our personal lives that extends broadly into our political lives. I wondered, what might a love song to my friends look like? What might a love song to myself look like?”

“Figure and I” offers a response to that very question. “There are two distinct characters in the song, representing the severance between self, or soul, and body,” Leschper explains. “It is about learning how to love the body and the spirit, how to combine the two.” Inspired by the samba artist Nelson Cavaquinho, Leschper programmed a drumbeat and quickly tracked a hand clapping pattern to accompany it, a rhythmic feature that recurs throughout the album. “The accessibility of hand clapping as an instrument was really exciting for me, and I've long been interested in the symbolism of hands representing work, or community, or offering, or holding and being held. Using this fundamental sound-making device makes me feel rooted in a deeper sense of time because of the historical longevity of hand clapping in folk traditions around the world.”

Hand clapping also characterizes the lush sonic landscape of “Picture Window,” where Leschper aimed to create a sensory space vast enough to encompass the fleeting whimsy of childhood. It felt appropriate to include a flamenco palmas pattern, as the sound of palms slapping together reminded Leschper of the hand clapping games children play. “I grew up in a small town in Georgia, so summertime meant crickets and cicadas, the way they phase in and out of each other, and the swirling movement of pollen on the water,” she says. “I built this song in layers, beholding always the backdrop of the south, the warble of head rising off the scalding pavement.”

Every song on The Opening, or the Closing of a Door is best described as a love song. Leschper calls the cavernous, organ-led “Ribbon” as a “song of encouragement,” one that offers a path away from isolation. “If you give me the sign/ I’ll take my knife to the ties of/ Your ribbons holding something/ Like a light inside,” Leschper coos, steadfast as a mourning dove over an arrangement that chirps and trills with the pointed inclusion of flute. Those arrangements were made in collaboration with Sammy Weissberg, whose unique orchestration meshed seamlessly with Leschper’s vision for the project. “Sammy was approaching the music quite visually, even theatrically. He expressed this desire to visualize the chamber arrangement sections as a ‘character’ who steps into and out of frame, bringing their own sonic landscape with them”. Longtime collaborator Matthew Anderegg wrote “All That You Never Wanted,” the only track on the album not penned by Leschper. The perky, sing-song delivery of a single phrase repeated over and over again recalls a commercial jingle. “For me, the song feels like a rumination on consumerism, and ultimately a rejection of it. The form reinforces the content, with the repetition of the main phrase reading almost as an advertisement.”

If we are to consider The Opening, Or Closing Of A Door as an encapsulation of Leschper’s metamorphosis, no song addresses it more vividly than “Compass,” an ode to those who have helped her sustain a life. As cymbals crash into the outro, Leschper’s singular voice is joined by a group of accompanists, among them members of her immediate family and a few close friends, whose amateurish singing offers the kind of warmth and comfort only found in the people we love most. Here, Leschper returns to that hearth, basks in it, and gives thanks.

“Lately my work centers on exploring joy in its wildness and complexity, the complicated ways that this joy intersects with an imperfect world,” Leschper says. “Circularity has become a major part of my belief system, the lens through which I watch the world -- observing cycles helps me make sense of my universe, both internally and externally. Popular culture loves to tell us stories about the importance of ‘growth’, personal growth, economic growth, what have you. It’s very linear. In work, as in life, I am making a conscious effort to center myself around something antithetical to that, because linear growth just doesn't exist in nature. If you zoom out far enough, everything is cyclical, everything is in a stage of transition! It becomes impossible to ignore the vast network of systems we inhabit, that we are in relationship with each other at all times.”

credits

released March 4, 2022

All songs written by Kristine Leschper except "All That You Never Wanted" written by Matthew Anderegg
Produced by Drew Vandenberg and Kristine Leschper
Engineered and mixed by Drew Vandenberg
Mastered by Joe Lambert
Recorded at The Gradwell House, Virtue And Vice Studios, and Chase Park Transduction
January and February 2021
Album design by Bradley Pinkerton
Cover photo by Tyler Borchardt
Art direction by Kristine Leschper

Kristine Leschper ~ composition, voice, synthesizer, electric and nylon string guitar, vibraphone, piano, organ, hand clapping
Garrett Burke ~ drumset, vibraphone, auxiliary percussion and sound collage, synthezier, hand clapping
Sammy Weissberg ~ woodwind and string arrangements, electric bass, upright bass, electric and nylon string guitar, piano, hand clapping

Additional musicians:
Flute ~ Kana Miyamoto
Clarinet, flute ~ Jasper Dutz
Violin ~ Masha Polishchuk
Violin ~ Benjamin Sutin
Viola ~ Laura Sacks
Cello ~ Daniel Hass
Synth ~ Matthew Anderegg

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Kristine Leschper Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The Opening, Or Closing Of A Door

New Album ~ out now on ANTI- Records

kristineleschper.ffm.to/toocoad

contact / help

Contact Kristine Leschper

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Kristine Leschper, you may also like: