“I remember thinking that because I’m not trained I could only dream of being on stage. If anyone else sees me playing, they should know you don’t need to be trained to make music.”
Although they’ve been performing live music and writing songs for a good while, the Leucotome trio have just now emerged out of the shadows of churches and cathedrals they perform in, into the light of day with their track release.
And thus, we come to find out about Leucotome’s recently published debut single, Consummation. You can listen to the track on Bandcamp (Consummation | Leucotome), and when you do, I promise you’ll find yourself haunted by the divine genius of their lyricism, the electronically atmospheric instrumentals and the dynamic chants of the vocals. Taking us to the darkest pits of nature, Leucotome’s Consummation finds beauty and power within that.
Just like the bands and endless genres they take inspiration from, Leucotome challenges the ways we approach music. It opens the mind to the possibilities of bending genres and sounds to your will. One of the members, Fiannuala (synths, songwriting and vocals), reminds us that musical training should not limit us to the confines of our dreams. If you want to perform on a stage, then you should use your free will to do so. Evelyn (Evie) takes up the synths, songwriting and vocals alongside Fiannuala, and Megan plays the guitar and bass. As Megan put it herself, she just shows up to make the noise and has a great time doing so.
Leucotome’s imagery and symbolism leaves a lot for the imagination to deconstruct, from the band name to the aesthetic style they embrace at gigs and the references they make in their songwriting., I had the greatest opportunity to be their first ever interview, delving into the folkloric background of Leucotome.
Having just come out from doing a gig and feeling good about their performance, the Manchester up-and-coming trio was enthusiastic to answer questions about themselves and their music. If you’re just as curious to know what inspires this trio of talented women as I was, you can read below about their story, their creativity and what we can expect from them in the future.
So first off, how did the band even come to formation? Would you like to describe how you met, what the journey has been like?
Meg and I [Evie] were in a previous band since, like, 2020. We were in it for a couple of years, and then they broke up in 2023. I was always wanting to form my own band, and asked Meg if she wants to be a guitarist. Then we [Evie and Fiannuala] met each other in 2022, also playing in various Manchester bands, I think I saw her play improvised sets in a place called Café Blah in Withington. I really wanted her to be in the band.
We had our first ever practice in 2023, so it’s been a while and we started playing last year. Meg went away for a long time as well. The band does not work if one of us is out of it, we all work together.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve had to face as a band so far?
[E]: Just trying to fit in practice. The challenge was when Meg went travelling.
[M]: (Meg chuckles) Sorry, my bad. I just went away for a bit, and they had to find other fantastic stand-ins whose names also began with an M coincidentally. When I came back, we picked it up from there. I went away for eight months to get some travelling out of my system. I was sad to leave Manchester and the band, but I was really glad that you welcomed me back in when I came back. I thought you would find a replacement, and luckily for me, no.
Well then, I’m also curious: what inspired the name Leucotome, which is originally a medical device used to perform lobotomies?
[E]: I initially heard the word on Radio 4, and I thought this is perfect. I can’t speak for the rest of the band, but I’ve had very poor mental health in my past. Reading about how many women were lobotomised, less than 50 years ago, I would have been an ideal candidate. That terrified me because I would’ve lost my personality. I think it’s a way of, maybe not coping, but pointing out that these things really happened recently. The fact that we would not be given our own autonomy, being in a band, on stage and singing, gave us that back.
You recently released your first ever single, Consummation. What does that feel like, to have your first official track out? Did it feel like a big achievement?
[Collectively]: Yes!
[M]: We’re really proud of it. We went into the studio, worked with this guy called Jem, who’s a really great sound engineer and then took it to one of our other friends to get it produced. I think we were really happy with how it turned out. The girls wrote that when I was out of the country, I first heard it when I attended a Leucotome gig as an audience member, and thought it was a really cool song.
In this single, your lyrics are haunting, gory and macabre in a way. The track itself is very catchy but also haunting. What inspired this single and what does it mean for you?
[F]: So, it’s about the thought of different things. Especially, feelings of shame and trying to work through feeling ashamed by your personality or body. It’s reclaiming this idea of being a monster or being monstrous and having a desire, passion. It sort of reclaims it and makes it an expression of: “Okay, if you think I am these things, then I am these things. And I will be this hideous monster, and be happy about it”.
When I was listening to the track, it might sound silly, but it reminded me of Lady Macbeth a lot. Do you draw any ideas – maybe not from Shakespeare himself – but perhaps from classic literature in general? Where do you find your biggest muses?
[E]: Almost every other song we have written, apart from Consummation, does have a lot of historical tie-ins. We regularly play a song about Catherine de Siena. She was made a Saint, but she was sanctified because she was so holy that she starved herself to be pure for God. It’s a tie-in with my own feelings of anorexia and wanting to gain control over everything I can. I first came across this idea of anorexia mirabilis when reading some medical studies to help understand why I had been so ill when I was younger.
There’s so many ways to translate current feelings through the lens of history. People seem to have suffered all down the line, so why not tie-in and write about that.
There’s another one called Selkie, which we wrote. Fiannuala turned to me saying that she’s got awful PMDD, and again, that ties into the Scottish folklore about selkies who are half-women, half-seals. She has this seal skin that she puts on to not be human for a while, which is lovely. So yeah, there’s a lot of folklore as well as history in our songs.
On the other hand, although it’s very atmospheric, your vocals sound very confident. There’s also a line: “And all I touch is made divine”. Is there a sense of feminine divinity and power you’re trying to convey?
[F]: I guess there is a lot of reference to religion because I was raised in a devout Catholic family. There’s an idea of a Madonna-Whore complex, either you’re completely pure and innocent or you’re the Whore of Babylon. That’s the reference to the lyrics “I am the Mother of Harlots, the abominations of the Earth.” It is touching on the idea of a divine feminine, but warping it and saying that it’s not in the idea of a perfect, pure being. It also references a bottomless pit or endless void, so it doesn’t talk about the Earth or the ground but it talks about someone who is grounded in their natural environment.
[E]: This is why our songwriting works quite well. She was raised Catholic and I was pagan, so there’s a lot of approaches to femininity and it works.
On Bandcamp, you describe yourself as an “organic industrial femme folk cult, harbingers of the apocalypto-medieval era”. On Instagram, your caption says “omnioscillaiting industrifolk feyfemme cult”. Is this ‘omnioscillation’ and a very wide description of who you are an expression to avoid being compartmentalised and limited to just one aesthetic or genre?
[F]: I think it is. That is one of the biggest issues I have when someone asks about who we are and what we make. We’re not writing it to plan that this is going to be a goth song or a folk song. I did have in mind that we’re not a loud band, not a quiet or atmospheric band. We mix and match to weave our way through different genres.
[E]: Some feedback we received for our demo tape was: where are we going next if there’s so many different types of songs on there?
And what, or who, inspired you to make the kind of music you’ve been producing thus far?
[E]: We all have very different inspirations. We all have a playlist together that we keep adding to.
[M]: I personally find this a difficult question, because you do just take inspiration from everywhere, whether you realise it or not, and I do listen to a lot of music. Specifically with Leucotome I’m trying to channel quite rough sounds with distorted guitars. Evie and Fiannuala write great melodies, which is where the folkloric elements come in. I like bringing the two together.
[F]: I guess what made me want to make this music that is angry and feminine is from bands like Noise or industrial musicians, all very different noises of different genres. It’s usually very dominated by men and this military style and I wanted that feminine element to it. When I did more delving into it, I did find more women in music who were angry. There is a different idea expressed of the body and that integration with religion. As I became more involved in the music scene around me, a good friend from a Welsh-language goth band was a message of powerful feminine emotion, and divine aspects.
[E]: I’m the complete opposite. My whole family played music altogether, and I grew up being surrounded by Scottish music. When I was twenty-something I got into industrial music, and that was a lot of destructive and military aspects. Some musicians took apart the stage, and made that part of their performance rather than just playing music. Also, a lot of the Elephant Six Collective back in the 1990s, they were doing so many things on their tapes. This made me realise there doesn’t need to be a structure to songs like verse, chorus, verse. It opens your mind to different approaches to music.
I see you’ve also performed in religious spaces, perhaps cathedrals and churches. What does it feel like to perform and oscillate in such environments?
[E]: It’s lovely!
[M]: I think it suits us a lot. Whenever we play church, or a crypt underground next to Coventry cathedral, we just fit into that environment.
[E]: I think especially a lot of our songs work, because churches are built for live singing. One of the support acts we played was for the Cheeky Girls.
[M]: That church wasn’t particularly… It was well set up! But those sorts of venues aren’t equipped for electronic instruments, but we said that it does suit the vocals and folk themes.
You’ve also referenced a lot of religious iconography on your IG feed. You also reference very pagan elements, like witchcraft and cults – and of course, historically the two don’t co-exist very well. Do you ever fear being criticised for mixing the two together? What was the thought process behind these aesthetic choices?
[E]: For me, it’s what I always knew, the pagan aspect. I grew up in the middle of nowhere. I wrote some songs when I was fifteen all about disappearing into the forest and witches. Then I met Fiannoula, who was Catholic and that was something I never had exposure to before we met. I never thought about whether we’re invoking the wrath of the Church (she laughs).
[F]: For me, I find so much restriction in the church. There’s a Pet Shop Boys song called It’s a Sin about walking around and constantly feeling like you’re doing something wrong because of being raised with religious ideas. I think it’s making music that is darker and recognising that I’m blending these two things, it makes me feel good. It also helps with the fact that it’s tying this restriction into a creative expression. It probably deconstructs it, and it helps me feel less shame about who I am.
[E]: You have to have that recognition to write a good song I think. One of my songs is working through my own mental block. Keep your ears peeled for all the other songs and problems of mine, I guess (they laugh)!
So, you’ve also been performing quite a lot. Is there a favourite gig you’ve done so far?
[M]: Supernormal Festival was lovely! Something blew a fuse somewhere, so I was playing kind of acoustically, and we were just talking about certain venues not necessarily being made for electronic instruments. But it was lovely, and set up a really big forest. We were staying at this festival in Oxfordshire, an independent kind of thing, when we were asked to perform and we did perform in a barn. It was just good vibes!
Have you ever had people who don’t know you come to your shows, and if so, what’s their response to your performances?
[F:] When Meg’s boyfriend and friend first came to watch us play, afterwards they were like “that’s terrifying”.
[M]: I sort of told them in advance. They asked how I think the show will make them feel, and I said probably scared. They agreed, like “we were scared!”.
If there’s one thing you’d like for someone to take away from your music and live performances, what would it be?
[E]: To be inspired to make their own music. As a younger kid I would’ve loved to see people like me perform. There’s not a lot of femme-presenting, especially weirder music bands that you see out there. . I would’ve loved to see that, to realise that we’re allowed to be on that stage.
[F]: I think the same thing, just to be inspired. This was the first band I’ve properly performed on stage with, and I remember thinking that because I’m not trained I could only dream of being on stage, but I just couldn’t sing or play instruments and then the more that I decided to do it anyway, I played with synths that don’t need chords. The more you do it, the more you build up your confidence. If anyone else sees me playing, they should know you don’t need to be trained to make music.
[M]: I’m in agreement with these guys. It’s about making people feel like that was cool, and they can go and make something like that.
Amusia Awareness had also included you as part of an “experimental psychological test”. As far as I know, the organisation studies the effects of music on the psychological state. Would you like to describe this event, and your experience working with them?
[E] This was the Cheeky Girls one. So, this guy puts on the most disparate sounding bands you can think of at once. There were 7 or 8 bands playing in a church just seeing how much the audience can tolerate before it gets too much. It’s quite a gear change going from listening to one band to so many others. They do style it as a scientific thing, but unfortunately, as of yet, it’s not. But I’d love to do something like that.
M: But the guys had lab coats and clipboards on! They might have been interviewing people, I have no idea, who knows what they wrote down.
What would be your dream venue to perform at right now?
M: Maybe doing an outdoor gig, in like a forest. It’s a difficult thing to make happen, but it would be nice to do.
E: There’s a venue near where my parents live, in Findhorn in far North East Scotland. The community is very hippie, and they have a gorgeous village hall with a massive stained glass door outside. It’s in the middle of this community but also none of us can drive. The best venue would be in a practice room where we don’t have to move anything or anywhere (Evie laughs). But we’ve done similar things, debuting newer stuff to our friends and we’ll be playing Café Blah again because we have friends at the café, too.
Do you have a dream artist you’d like to collaborate with?
E: There’s an industrial band called Mandy, Indiana who I think just released a new album. I’d love to support them. But then, playing with our friends and other bands in Manchester and getting their support. But also, it’s much scarier being judged by strangers than people you know!
F: I don’t mean to sound narcissistic, but I genuinely never pictured making music with anyone outside of the band.
M: Me too to be honest, I’m not opposed to it but I’ve never thought about it.
Do you have any more releases up your sleeve? Maybe an album you’d like everyone to keep an eye out for?
E: We do! When we recorded Consummation, we recorded two other songs at Vibratone Studios. So, hopefully the next one will be in a couple of weeks when I get my sister to do an album cover! It will be a better recording, a re-release of Tricoteuse from our demo tape. We’ll also be releasing Radium Girls, one that we play regularly and also historical about women who got poisoning from radiation at factories. The dream is to have an EP done this year. We’ve got so many songs, we just haven’t got the money!
F: Our demo tape was released on cassettes via Crush Zone Records, and we’d love to release music on vinyl one day, too.
Afterword
With hopes of releasing an EP this year, Leucotome has a long journey ahead of them. Performing regularly around the venues of Manchester, you can follow them on Instagram (@leuco.tome) to look out where you can see them live next.
And if not for the live shows, then you should give them a follow to appreciate the mystical and astral photography, folkloric imagery and to know when the next unearthly release will be out and ready for download.
Thank you to the trio at Leucotome for this interview, and I encourage anyone reading this to challenge their musical comfort bubble and support the band by listening and sharing their tracks, but also purchasing them with a donation on Bandcamp if you can!
The music scene of Manchester will continue flourishing thanks to these artists, and it is up to us to enable that history to be made.
Article by Rozalia Lewandowska