Immerse yourself in the chilling and eldritch atmosphere with Alicia Kiah and Kursa guiding us through their collaborative project Nisky Hill, released through the Memory Palace imprint. Seep your soul into the sonically sensational project the duo creates for us to wander into. From sweeping harmonics to granular beats, Alicia Kiah and Kursa demonstrate the elegance that arrives when true synergy blossoms. An unforgettable collection of tracks that allows anyone to escape and explore the depths of our curiosities.
Before you leave, linger a bit longer and read our exclusive interview with Alicia Kiah and Kursa as they discuss the creative process of Nisky Hill, the significance it holds, and what to expect for their Album Release show at the Black Box!
Discover beauty with Alicia Kiah and Kursa at Nisky Hill
As we step onto the ominous grounds that are Nisky Hill, we feel the frequencies shift around us. The airy feelings cradle us as we walk deeper into the environment. While we stop to observe, we notice the elegance that begins to awaken. Now begins the full artistry that comes with the collaboration of Alicia Kiah and Kursa.
Throughout the album, there is a ton to be unraveled for the listener. Immediately, we get to fully immerse ourselves in the ethereal soundscapes that come from Alicia Kiah and her masterful violin melodies. She paints the environment around us, as she sonically transports us into different realms of our subconscious. And within the background, Kursa crafts the inner details and intricate depths of the melodies that Kiah plays. From extruding the depths of our subconscious, Kursa meshes his cutting-edge production talents with the elegance of the strings to elevate us into a tranquil state. While we hypnotically fall in sync with the shifts and tones, the duo builds a healing atmosphere for the listener. Fearlessly taking on the beauty of the distressing, thorny paths and sharing that courage of building what true possibilities can lead to if you allow it.
An album you truly will want to have on repeat through your lifetime
Within Nisky Hill, you can engulf the synergy that radiates from the tracks as you dive deeper through the album. The various emotions that seep through the album, you can fully unravel different layers and experience new moments. Whether you want to fall into the darkness and dance along the highest peaks of your journey through tracks like “Krubera”, “Foam”, or “The Empress.” Or maybe want to float and escape into new dimensions, untapping different emotions through tracks like “Nameo”, “Mirari (You Wonder)”, or “Oak.” The album can carry you through different expeditions and lessons. Alicia Kiah and Kursa truly build beauty through their collaborative talents, and share with us the power of synergy within Nisky Hill.
Naturally, the duo craft an atmospheric album that is meant for any listener to immerse themselves and wander through the different realms. Through Nisky Hill, Alicia Kiah and Kursa bring us to a destination where we can fully untangle the emotions that linger inside. Now, allowing us to embrace the comfort of our surroundings, so we feel free. From the vast textures within the album, the duo encourages us to absorb the peaks and shifts. This time, instead of pulling away from the unfamiliarity, Nisky Hill is a welcoming sanctuary for anyone to truly express themselves. No judgement, just pure serenity. There is a ton of beauty to be discovered as you wander through Nisky Hill, and through each listen through Alicia Kiah and Kursa deliver something new to uncover.
In Conversation With Alicia Kiah & Kursa
seradopa: What were the inspirations that you both collaborated together in sonically building the atmosphere and environment of Nisky Hill?
Alicia Kiah & Kursa: Throughout our careers, we have been working almost in parallel in associations and scenes. In 2021, we attempted our first collaboration in which Oska [Kursa] wanted to replace a splice vocal with a violin.
[Laughs]
It’s a cool melody, but we both knew there was something far more interesting to discover. In 2022, we collaborated on “Body Of Snakes,” released by Japanese label Murder Channel, in which far more avant-garde techniques were used in terms of processing shrieking ghost harmonics from the violin through granular modular processing. The results were completely alien and outside of anything either of us had made before. That’s when we knew there was a sound we hadn’t made before and that there would be others.
The overall sound and texture of this album is rooted in the organic but processed with the modern. Alicia comes from a classical background but has been involved in cutting-edge electronic music for the past 15 years. Oska has always been somewhat of a pioneer through sheer rejection of the norm; he has focused on having a signature / recognizable style.
The inspiration was an insatiable love of sound, in so many forms. Whether it be musical or from nature, all sound is exciting to us. There’s an underlying, undefined emotion throughout the album. It is just pure expression from years of listening and honing our skills. We aimed to take ourselves out of our comfort zones and experiment with rare techniques and approaches, breaking the rules we had created for ourselves.
seradopa: Nisky Hill has been 2 years in the making. What were the early conversations & ideas that started building this album, and how has the evolution of the album grown over 2 years to what the audience is about to listen to?
Alicia Kiah & Kursa: In reality, it was born of a sheer desire to collaborate with no real end goal. As we got deeper into the project, themes started to emerge organically. Certain tunes just started to work together in a very serendipitous way.
We talked a lot about experimenting and pushing ourselves as musicians. Using more avant-garde violin techniques such as ghost harmonics, sul ponticello, atypical shifting, and pizzicato, we explored melodic content and redefined our musical language.
seradopa: It looks like Nisky Hill is a cemetery in Pennsylvania, which is also depicted through the artwork. What is the significance of titling the album Nisky Hill?
Alicia Kiah & Kursa: You’re exactly right! It is in fact, a cemetery, and we spent many hours contemplating our day’s work there.
It became a sanctuary for us both, as anytime we found ourselves hitting a wall, we could go there and be inspired or comforted by nature. The cemetery itself stands across from a huge monolithic, decommissioned Steel factory. There’s something wonderful about the juxtaposition of a huge metal monument to a dead industry in eyeshot of the graves, surrounded by flourishing nature. We feel like its image impacted the album in terms of finding beauty within the chaos.
seradopa: Creatively, was it freeing to have one another to craft this album together? What were some things you’ve learned from each other while making the album? And were there any challenges in making this album along the way?
Alicia Kiah & Kursa: It really was incredibly freeing and inspiring – when we’re in the studio, there’s always an immense amount of ideas.
Kursa: From an engineering standpoint, I obviously had to learn how to mix and layer strings. Alicia has been doing this for over a decade, so she was already well-versed in microphones, positioning, and the general art of recording. That skill has now been passed on to me.
From this new knowledge, we began to experiment and develop our own unique methods. Every part of this has been taking what we both know and then developing it into something else together. Then, on the more musical theory side of things, I brushed up on the dusty knowledge I had from taking lessons as a kid!
Alicia showed me how to expand on this by studying my favorite compositions and composers, such as learning a bunch of chords from the guitarist Joe Pass and other brilliant jazz musicians.
Alicia Kiah: I learned a lot from Oska about production and song structure. His fluid melodic work with drums was extremely inspiring to me. He showed me how drums could be a melody. As a violinist, I had never solely focused on rhythm.
His love of percussion was extremely contagious and sparked a lot of wonder and curiosity in me. Learning about mixing and gain staging was also a fascinating world to explore. I truly felt that we both explored our musicianship in this album production.
Oska is an incredible guitarist, and to see his expansion of melodic work using music theory was awesome to witness. Expect to see and hear more guitar in our future tracks together.
seradopa: This is an album about synergy. How would each of you artistically describe how each of your styles blends? What made it feel so simpatico?
Alicia Kiah & Kursa: One of the biggest parts of making this so fluid was to remove our preconceptions of what it should be and allow complete trust in each other’s ideas, styles, and approaches.
Once we did this, the whole process was relatively easy for us since there was always a fresh idea or perspective to pursue. When you remove expectation and only have curiosity left, there is a wonderfully open canvas for complete creative expression.
As we got a few months deep into the projects, we ended up having a completely joined flow state where the goals were so unified that we barely needed to say any words! Our minds joined as one, almost like an entity separate from ourselves.
seradopa: For each of you, what song holds the most significance to you from this album and why?
Kursa: For me, it’s always going to be the atmospheric works that get me. The whole idea was to capture something deeply emotive, and I feel like it was nailed in “Homeward Pulse.”
The sweet yet morose movements in the melodies and harmonies capture something gut-wrenchingly beautiful that I’ve never been able to create alone. It has unexpectedly become one of my proudest works.
Alicia Kiah: “Homeward Pulse” is for me the most emotive and vivid memory. We wrote that song in one session. We were feeling so much at the time.
“Oak” is also a song that is truly significant in my musical journey. I pushed myself as a violinist in that track and did slides that were atypical or frowned upon in the classical world. Both Oska and I fell in love with that slide sound though. That song is represented by our names Oska and Alicia Kiah (O.A.K).
Every song holds a complex mosaic of memories. I could write a novel on the details of this album, but I will let the music speak for itself.
seradopa: With this being released on Memory Palace, how has that felt to be sharing Nisky Hill through this label? What made Memory Palace feel it was the right fit for this album?
Alicia Kiah & Kursa: First of all, big ups to Tyler [Of The Trees] for truly giving us artistic freedom in our album. We felt extremely supported by the Memory Palace Team. They have been wonderful to work with. Shout-out especially to Maya [Co-Label Manager for Memory Palace] for her organizing and Calder Moore for the incredible artwork.
Oska has been chatting with Tyler and sharing tunes for many years, so when the opportunity arose to submit demos for the label, it was pretty clear that it could be a little more left of center than usual. We could tell that this album was challenging sonically, and we truly thought Memory Palace could handle the genre-bending we were creating in the album.
The album itself is incredibly precious to us both, and since its foundation is trying new things, it made sense to approach a label with a broad sound palette that encourages experimentation. We are incredibly grateful for the trust and care we’ve received in this whole project.
seradopa: What is the perfect setting you believe people should be listening to Nisky Hill?
Alicia Kiah & Kursa:The perfect setting is any that you can listen to and feel comfortable in.
We recommend listening to the whole album from start to finish. Long drives, unwinding at home, and meditative nightclub listening all feel very appropriate. The way in which this album is mixed and mastered through referencing the barefoot “meme technology.”
[Laughs] Seriously, look it up!
It means that we made sure it sounds great on speakers of all sizes. We ensured that the low-end harmonics came through even on a phone speaker! We felt it was important since that’s where most people hear music these days, and we don’t want to exclude any listeners.
seradopa: Both of you are about to have your Album Listening Party at The Black Box, and you’ve both done hybrid sets in the past. Does this event feel different than in the past? What feelings come up as you prepare to share your art officially with the world?
Alicia Kiah & Kursa: It feels different in the sense that this is a combination of us both. There isn’t one voice versus the other or the back and forth of a b2b. It is a pure hybrid sound of both of us that has been carefully planned and rehearsed with classical precision and surgical production.
It’s pretty new ground for both of us to be this vulnerable with our sound, but we can’t wait to perform and share it.
There is overwhelming appreciation that we have arrived at this point together. We feel excited that we are able to share our art. Life is short and fragile, and to have an opportunity to perform something so personal together is an honor.
seradopa: Anything either of you would like to share with the community that we should keep our Hawk Eye on?
Alicia Kiah & Kursa: Collaboratively, we are developing a full live set.
We are creating album number 2 and various EPs with our more lofi / beatsy alias Snoozi!
We will be releasing more together over the next year and into the future. More video projects are also on the horizon as locations become explored and inspire further writing. Nature is and always will be our greatest muse.
Immerse and escape in the world Alicia Kiah and Kursa made at Nisky Hill
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