Album Review: Leure - Holland Sky

Ash Hendriks' rapid evolution from the crooning, guitar plucking girl-half of Wolves At The Door to the skeletally-simple electronic artist Leure is good news. Leure's debut record, Holland Sky, sounds like a heartbeat trapped in a refrigerator. It's an album delivered with polish and intelligence; a good omen for Perth experimental/electronica, and a triumph for Hendriks herself.

Tightly produced and whittled down to the fundamentals, Holland Sky is worth comparisons to the icy sensibility of Lykke Li and the sparse, minimalistic direction of Atlas Sound. It's submarine sound; cold, aquatic, full with muted scratching and synthetic sound that conveys lonesomeness and distance. Hendriks' voice is kept to a glacial purr across the album, and it's impressive she maintains such gravity and discipline with a sound that originates so close to her self. Ghost Fire, Tired and Waiting are recognisable from Hendriks' Soundcloud, and their presence is both welcome and anticipated. Battles is Holland Sky's best new contribution to Leure's music, but it's difficult to isolate the album's individual tracks from the sum of their parts.

Black Light is concise and gloomy, built on a droning series of synthesised notes and a broken beat. Capture is anticlimactic, and perhaps an additional track at Holland Sky's conclusion would have added some warmth to what is a harrowing experimental album. But as it stands, Holland Sky is a beautiful record. You will feel like a better person for forwarding Holland Sky to your friend on Spotify/loading it onto their iPhone/breaking into their bedroom and slipping it under their pillow before the cops find out it was you who had the back-door key all along.