American Drift

This is Elysia's first official full-length album, existing as part of her Shenandoah Series but now released by FaltyDL's Blueberry Records. It's a concept study that follows Virginian American history, exploring brownness as more than culture or Othering, as geology. As mud, dirt and mineral, enmeshed in lithic, vast time scales.

American narratives are re-examined on this level: narratives of colonized and colonizer, slave histories, impact events and fern spikes, two-spirit and queer indigenous histories. Trans-ontologies are given voice and resonance.

Elysia's inspiration and influence comes from her love and relation to Latin American prog, Bolivian/Peruvian psych and metal, Mexican Tribalo style as well as Crunk/ southern hip hop, American psychedelic folk and Southern blues.

Artists of influence include hip-hop group Crucifix, illapu, Wara, Ruth White, Lady Legend J, Skip James, Quilapayun, Linda Perhacs, Stepin Fetchit and Bert Williams, among others.

American Drift works as a transevangelistic prayer written by Elysia for Money Allah. Wildly disanthropocentric, follows a transcorporeal and transmutagenetic movement across objects. Based on the hymn "Rock of Ages" written in 1763 and Paul Claudel's notes on the psalter/ stations of the cross.

Axacan is Based and named on the violent story of the first Spanish settlement in Virginia, dedicated to Elysia's friend and performance artist Boychild, as well as the late queer theorist, Jose E Munoz.

Petrichrist is based on the etymology of the word "petrichor," this piece follows a journey in Elysia's Ford Ranger, driving up Shenandoah mountain: an encounter between mountain and vehicle, interactions of non-human objects touching one another in a worlding where all things have agency. Dedicated to writer Jeffrey J. Cohen and Crunk artist Nicole Walker.

Wing is a song in two portions, beginning with impact event leading into negative photosynthesis, and finishing with a "fern spike event" as crunk-huayno ballad featuring Money Allah. the first portion of the song is loosely based on the melody to the spiritual "wade in the water" and is dedicated to the late composer Margaret Bonds.