Hiraeth - Kasteiung (V60)

After two incredible releases on Silken Heart and Ek Verlag, Hiraeth presents her third release ‘Kasteiung’; a staggeringly expansive work that combines and builds upon both the intimate confessionals of ‘Run’ and the scorched-earth soundscapes of ‘pms’ to create a work that traverses delicacy, volume, texture and space with breathtaking poise and assurance.

Going from gossamer-like tenuity to dense thunderous noise to field recorded abstractions and all points in-between, ‘Kasteiung’ unfurls its oblique, dream-like chronicle with a firm confidence. Hiraeth implicitly trusts the listener to follow her through this album’s many labyrinthine passages, all the while throwing sharp, caustic deviations and keeping the atmosphere tense and inscrutable.

Songs warp and contort into magnificently chimeric shapes as solemn, pastoral canticles oscillate into dense, thunderous harsh noise and hypnotic, opaque droning devotionals, often within the space of a single track, all stitched together from beginning to end by threads of haunted, foreboding bucolia.

This bucolia is personified and given life most of all by Hiraeth’s singularly incredible voice, going from a hymnal continence to furious howl and vehement bellow, it’s the instrument that guides us through the quixotically elaborate, volatile and overwhelmingly sublime journey of ‘Kastieiung’.

Zither on 'Satan Panonski' by Anton Stammsen
Violin on 'Schiffsbruch' by Freija Mäntyniem
Mixed by Sarah Košicki
'Satan Panonski' mixed by Anton Stammsen
Mastered by Lukas Gehrmann
Layout: Uglyblackwork (Tobi Kellenhofer)

More Hiraeth:
himukalt.bandcamp.com/album/pms
silkenheartrecords.bandcamp.com/album/run

Released June 11th 2026. Venalism V60