Laikka goes from euphoria to despair on the new album

Electro-pop duo Laikka sees some of the men as “leeches” – like leeches – in the song of the same name from their second album “Bleach”, which has just been released.

“The song originated when we worked with artist Carmen Schrenk at the parallel Vienna festival,” says singer Moritz Wunderwald. “I made three performance sets called ‘Water’ in our set. As a metaphor for how we ask women to bow to patriarchal structures, I drank water until that was no longer possible. There were also themes of female sexuality and shame, and we were deeply moved by that performance. We wrote this song from that.” “.

For this, Leica set a quiet melody on a high-frequency, hasty beat. This also reflects the general direction the duo are taking with this second album: “The songs are faster, tougher and more intense than they were in the beginning,” Alex Gruehn explains. “We wanted to push the boundaries of what this album could be. We experimented a lot and used a lot of distorted and broken sounds that you don’t usually hear in pop music. At the same time, we also brought the songs to the point in a more focused way.”

The frenzied strikes date back to the end of the pestilence and thus the end of the solitary phase of life in which it first appeared.

“Now it’s about euphoria afterwards and escapism. But there are also some sad songs. In general, they all describe how we’re trying to deal with life. We didn’t realize until later that this was a story that went along with what was going on in the world: the joy of an end.” The epidemic and the chance to get out again, but what followed after that the severe shock of the Russian invasion of the world disrupted Ukraine, which led to a state of latent despair in the world.

On “Bleach”, Laika no longer illuminates the themes of masculinity and potential forms of masculinity that defined the first album in terms of questioning, but in terms of active self-empowerment.

“It’s always important for us to promote freedom of self-expression,” says Wunderwald. “We want to show: I don’t need to be afraid, I can go out and dress and act as I want, and that’s a good thing.”

The theme of patriarchal structures does not only appear in “Leechs”. Because in the field of music, for example, you can see this very clearly: “Just look at the festival line-up Frequency: Every year there is criticism about not having any women on stage. We have great musicians, there are enough. However 90% of the bands playing just this year are men.”