Eartheater

The solo moniker of New York-based artist Alexandra Drewchin, Eartheater makes challenging, dreamlike music that combines acoustic instrumentation with intense digital manipulation, as well as her own multi-tracked, three-octave vocals. The project’s first two albums, Metalepsis and RIP Chrysalis, both appeared in 2015, to much critical acclaim. She moved in a more confrontational, club music-influenced direction with releases like 2018′s IRISIRI before making the lusher, more acoustic Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin, which appeared in 2020.
Prior to releasing music as Eartheater, Drewchin sang and played electronics in Guardian Alien, a sprawling psychedelic outfit founded by drummer Greg Fox. Eartheater’s first recording was “Bird’s Eye,” an abstract indie rock single released by Custom Made Music in 2013. The single was just a warm-up for her subsequent material, which twisted elements of folk music, classical composition, noise, fluid ambient soundscapes, and even hip-hop into dense yet delicate collage-like pieces. Her first album, Metalepsis, was released by Chicago-based Hausu Mountain in early 2015. It was followed later in the year by its sibling release, RIP Chrysalis. Both albums were met with praise, particularly from FACT Magazine, which named RIP Chrysalis one of its Top Ten favorite albums of the year.
Drewchin spent the next few years working on new material as well as collaborating with performance art duo FlucT and starring in an opera titled The Fool in February 2017. She also made two guest appearances on Show Me the Body’s Corpus I mixtape that year. In 2018, Eartheater signed to Bill Kouligas’ Pan label and released her third full-length, IRISIRI. Containing a greater presence of hard, fractured electronic rhythms and poetic lyrics that confront rape culture as well as claustrophobia, the album included guest appearances from Moor Mother and Odwalla1221. A mixtape titled Trinity followed in 2019, featuring production by experimental club producers such as AceMo and Color Plus. Angel Lust, an ethereal, string-based collaboration with New York duo LEYA, appeared at the very end of the year. Eartheater’s fourth proper album, Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin, expanded on this direction, including further contributions from LEYA as well as chamber arrangements by the Ensemble de Cámara CSMA. In November of 2022, a deluxe version of 2019′s Trinity mixtape was released, adding seven new tracks to the original. These included remixes from COUCOU CHLOE, Sammy, and others, as well as contributions from Dillinger Escape Plan. ~ Paul Simpson