Let’s start off easy aye? How are you doing?
I’m actually in bed with covid, round three. I’m working my way through the different variants to compare and contrast. This strain is 6 out of 10, mild but a bit cranky. Apart from that I’m just busy getting ready for my upcoming album release with Lars Moston. Our album “No Time To Explain” comes out on 19 May, and we’ve been releasing singles and music videos every 6 weeks since October. We have a tendency to make music videos with overly elaborate costumes, so my life has been a whole lot of running around in weird getups being a weirdo lately. One was a tongue-in-cheek faux-spaghetti western that we filmed in the New Zealand mountains and Egyptian desert – lots of epic scenery, inflatable horses and fake mustaches… Check it out on Youtube – it’s called “Now Is Love”.
Standard question for the kids, tell us more about the name. What does it mean? Is there a deep meaning behind it?
Well my name is Leah, which apparently means “weary”, cheers Mum. But I make music under the name Murmur Tooth, which means, well, nothing. It started as a band, and because democratically deciding a band name can be arduous, we just ended up just picking two words we all kinda liked and putting them together. Then we went our separate ways and I carried on solo and just kept the name so I didn’t have to make a bunch of new internet profiles, haha!
You’ve got a unique sound, but how would you explain what kinda music you make without using sounds terms?
Well my music can be quite dark and raw, but also quite beautiful at times. Maybe a good non-sound description for my songs would be “gutter diamonds”. I’m entirely focussed on my multi-genre collab project with Lars Moston these days though, and the sound that we’re producing is really different. I come from classical, metal and rock and he’s a house DJ and producer, so we’ve been playing around with how our completely opposite music backgrounds can work together. The songs that are coming out range from deep house to quirky pop, but it’s not dark like my solo stuff. If I was to describe the Murmur Tooth & Lars Moston sound without using sound terms I would have to use our album title “No Time To Explain”. That’s the most apt description we’ve come up with for our music so far…
Tell us more about the collab with Lars Moston, how did it come about? What did you learn from this experience?
We met at a bar, got on like a house on fire, and spent the night paying each other out about each other’s music tastes. So it seemed like the obvious challenge to try and produce a song together, which turned out to be a heap of fun, so we just carried on making songs together. I’ve learned so much about the electronic side of music working with Lars, and it’s completely opened my horizons. On this album we also played around with “un-electronicing” traditionally electronic sounds. We recorded a lot of our own percussion, for example – bags of chips for snares, spaghetti on a metal fan for hi-hats, walkie talkie static for atmospheres – just lots of random repurposed household stuff.
https://www.murmurtoothandlarsmoston.com/
What’s the goal as an artist, where do you want to be in five years?
I want to keep exploring the nexus of songwriting and genre with Lars – it’s really fascinating to see how musical ideas can be interpreted through the lens of different genres. And once the album is out we’re looking forward to more live shows – our live set is pretty fun – we have a keytar! In 5 years I would love to be doing both these things but with a more fluid home base – the ultimate would be to be able to chase summer around the world!
If you could eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Pies. Ze Germans don’t do pies and I miss them so bad. They are usually quite sensible, so I don’t understand why they can’t just put some meat in some pastry.
And what’s on the horizon for you? What are we looking out for?
We just released “Poison”, the last single from our album – this one is a bit special, it’s a transformative cover of the Alice Cooper classic – very different and a bit intense – check that one out.
And y’all should definitely be looking out for our album “No Time To Explain” in May, of course. We’re also going to be doing a NZ tour in January, so come along to a live show and have a dance.
