Not everything has a narrative. Not everything needs one. Kay Elizabeth, the source and centrepiece of Black Orchids, knows this better than most. You might think that a musician with degrees in Ethnomusicology and Performance Studies would be inclined to use her words to offer expositions of ideas. Instead, she honours language with her poetry, and invites you into an experience with her music that lives beyond, and perhaps underneath, what the rational aspect can hold. Her interest, and her gift, is one of power within vulnerability. It seems she has made her self an apprentice to forces greater than herself, so that now she can open a doorway to the mysteries that magnetise your viscera and make waking moments into dreamscapes. It just so happens that right now, she’s doing it through her music.

What exactly is Black Orchids? Well, it’s a band. At gigs you can see the four players, fronted in all ways by the ineffable Kay Elizabeth, and fleshed out in all other ways by a carefully curated gathering of musician-conjurers. Alain Duchesne, brings the meat to the bone with bass playing equivalent to the force of gravity. Then there’s drummer Brian Hedemann, who plays as if a house-party of shamans decided to use his body for their profound shenanigans. Magnus Box, on baritone guitar, holds the warlock’s role, manifesting things from dark places that only he can control. Finally Kay, with the quiet and fierce dignity of one who knows too much, and knows what words can and cannot do, holds the key that opens the door. It’s her songs, and her incredible voice that gives all this magic its luminescent centre. And when she turns that key, you go on a psychadelic somatic adventure of driving riffs that convey you into the simple complexity of human truths. A Black Orchids gig may not be for the faint of heart. But if you are feeling a bit pale and wan, it could just be the medicine you need.

Notes from the website describe the project thus: “Kay Elizabeth’s new project ‘Black Orchids’ is powerful, raw and lives within liminality... Soulful vocals soaked in a experimental provocative soundscape…”.

Now, I bet some of you are wondering what is meant by ‘liminality’. Let’s get into it, because understanding the meaning of this diaphanous concept gives us insight to the experience on offer. It all starts with the root - limen - which translates to ‘threshold’. From here we can follow the thread of that notion through the senses, personal experience, ritual, the social, the political, and finally cosmic understanding of what it is to be at a threshold. Sometimes the liminal is something you feel just under the surface of your existence; sometimes it’s the state of being between known states. It can be a place of danger, threatening the narrative provided by recognisable structures of the everyday. It can be a place of possibiity, where all the mysteries that were never meant to be solved enliven our senses. In a liminal space, we are sure only of of our senses. Boundaries dissolve, identities bleed like watercolours left outside in the English weather, and we are required to surrender to the stuff that informs language, but which words can never capture.

So, as you might imagine, I am disinclined to assign Black Orchids the label of a genre. I can say this: I like it best played loud. And it requires your full attention. This is not background music.

Black Orchids are just getting started, and like any truth-teller, Kay Elizabeth knows that her path is clearly laid out before her, as long as she listens to the subliminal. Fortunately for us, that path seems destined to be filled with her lyrical poetry, holy vocals, and the dangerous talents of her co-conspirators. Go hear, and feel for yourself. Accept the invitation, be opened, and come out the other side, changed.
 

Written by Genevieve K

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The Black Orchids are playing at Stage 3 (Hackney Empire) on Friday 29th April at 8pm. Tickets and info can be found here. 

You can check out Black Orchids on their official website, Twitter or Facebook. Alternatively you can check out their releases, here.