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We love it when a group lands on a trampoline of creative energy, getting that celebrated double bounce of collaborative physics. In the case of Leyya’s latest album, Half Asleep, we picture the duo of Sophie Lindinger and Marco Kleebauer holding hands as they summit into the sky. Excited by the early listen of this album, we sent out a request for the group to diagnose this impressive sound in their own words, and they were so generous to do so in detail. 

"Half Asleep is an album that tries to grasp what’s between sleeping and being awake, between digital and analog, between 1 and 0," shares Leyya. "The ambivalence of oblivion and eternal memory - digitally produced sounds morphed into complete unrecognizability but recorded onto to tape where even if overwritten afterwards, there will be a remembrance of it forever pressed onto a physical object. The lyrics circle around a similar feeling, namely realizing that you’ve never really lived the moment in the present but the memory of it when thinking back on it or questioning your position in relation to your surrounding, relationships and yourself. Trying to understand the unspoken rules of everything that lies in between two seemingly opposite things - past or present, love or hate, sleeping or being awake, existence or death."

"All the songs on this album circle around your own position in relation to friends, lovers, family, strangers, environment, self-image, time, etc," continues the duo. "How the way you act and live influences these relationships, how small decisions change them, how you and your traits affect them and how you actually want to execute all of this. How you affect them with just existing. It’s about the fear of being perceived, the joy of not being perceived, the fear of intimacy and the joy of it. The pressure that all these parts put on you and your life and your own expectation of how it should be."

"Half Asleep"

The song "Half Asleep" speaks in movements – it’s about the feeling of having missed half of your life, of being neither awake nor asleep, of hustling through the weeks without feeling anything is a present reality. "Half Asleep" is a brake, a pause and reflection, a recollection of the present.

"Hundred Or More"

This is a song about accepting the fact that some pain from the past will never be healed and trying not to fall into it over and over again.

I Don’t Hug So Well

“I Don't Hug So Well" is a song about social rules everybody follows in a friendship. The pressure of always being a good companion and the feeling that only existing isn't enough for someone to like me. Also the fear of being close with somebody on a friend level and the question, "Why do I feel uncomfortable when hugging somebody I actually care about?"

"Ease My Mind"

The melancholy remains in “Ease My Mind,” which was originally written in 2019 and has some repetitive, dance-y moments inspired by Steve Reif's asynchronous piano. The driving beat is reminiscent of chaos inside one's head, a clear, rhythmic sound pattern shifts, becomes multi-layered and reunites again, as does Sophie's analytical perspective, as the ambivalences, as everything that is in motion eventually comes to rest again. 

"Song For Everyday"

The making of the song “Song For Everyday“ was a pretty long process – it went through a couple of variations before we were happy with how the instrumental felt. For a while, it had a quite soft beat to it and somehow we realized it needed some heavy elements – so Marco played the drums as loud as he could and we distorted the signal to make it even more hard-hitting. Topic-wise, it is about the feeling of having nothing to say or tell. Nothing that excites or motivates.

"Nobody Cares, Lovely"

“Nobody Cares, Lovely” circles around the topic of the perception you think other people have of you. It’s kind of a pep talk to yourself saying that people’s lives always circle around themselves and nobody pays as much attention to you as yourself.

"Sometimes You’re Lonely"

“Sometimes You're Lonely” has a very different start – Marco's voice – and thus unexpectedly begins with a vocal sample. The song remains vulnerable and honest: what does it mean to dismantle our own emotions, why do we sometimes gaslight ourselves and not give our feelings the space they actually need?

"Why Not"

“Why Not“ emerged from a session we did with a friend of ours – he played drums, Sophie played synths and Marco bass. We played the musical idea for a few hours to kind of deactivate our brains and get in a kind of trance-mood. Later we built a song on top of this captured performance – we think you can still hear in the final recording the practice that went into it beforehand. It’s about the loss of faith in humanity taking care of each other and helping each other out and about trying to make a change, even if it’s small.

"Pumped Up High"

The hook line of “Pumped Up High” is an almost over 10 years old sample of a saxophone Marco recorded that we altered with different techniques and plug-ins, which inspired us to go in a more up-tempo “happy” direction. Despite it, the lyrics are about the urge to be in the middle of a crowd, a club, a gathering - to be in it but not part of it. The feeling of being included but without the urge of exchanging conversations with other people. You could say „Pumped Up High“ is about the joy of not being perceived in an environment where you’re welcome.“

"I’m Around I’m Around"

“I’m Around I’m Around“ is interesting from a production standpoint – elements come in and out of the frame like you do it in dance music – behaving almost like waves of frequencies. To support this feeling we also added a saxophone recording played by our friend Aaron Hader – it gets very wild in the end of the song, like the wave crashing in itself along the shore. It’s about the feeling of talking things over and over again with somebody and realizing it won’t change. But with the repeating “I’m around” indicating, that I’ll always be there and open to talk whenever the time is right.

"Ring In Silence"

“Ring In Silence” is the only song where we had a specific picture in our heads lyric-wise. It’s about the café Sophie always has to walk by when coming home and the feeling of everybody staring. The wish about just vanishing or staying in your apartment forever to not having to talk to anybody.

"What Did I Do Wrong"

“What Did I Do Wrong” is a song about reaching for a friend who let you down. Looking for the flaw in yourself – was it my fault?

"Tired"

On “Tired“ we used a specific function in our music program where you can turn any recording from your phone into synthesizer notes – that's how we translated a whacky acoustic guitar memo into a glitchy synth sound – because of the bad recording quality it misinterpreted a couple of notes wrong – we kept them and built the whole track idea around it. It’s about the feeling of being overwhelmed from the world and reaching out for advice.