Lux Interna fuses Americana, post-punk, Appalachian folk, desert blues, and aural experimentation with literate lyrics to create a singular sonic world. Conceived by Joshua Levi Ian and Kathryn Ian, the project has been shaped by a shifting constellation of musical talents over the years, each leaving their mark on its continuously evolving sound. Since 2009, Kris T. Force (Amber Asylum) has also been a core member, contributing to Lux Interna's dark, immersive textures. The lineup for the latest album, New Wilderness Gospel, includes the talents of Jackie Perez Gratz (Grayceon, Amber Asylum), Jeff Linsenmaier (Wovenhand, Czars, Keith Urban), Tim Gotch (Sleepbomb), and Adam Torruella.
Through tapestries woven from minor chords, human voices, delicate drones, and violent sprawls of sound, Lux Interna hymns the hidden god with intensity, seeking fire in the tension between transcendence and immanence. Drawing inspiration from his intensive research in comparative mysticism and esotericism, Joshua’s lyrics emerge from a deeply personal reservoir of symbols, visions, and obsessions.
The latest incarnation of Lux Interna pushes further into multimedia realms, seamlessly integrating music, narrative, film, and visual art to enrich their ever-evolving artistic vision.
After a decade of silence, LUX INTERNA return with their fifth album "New Wilderness Gospel". More than just a collection of songs, the album is the centerpiece of a larger, immersive world woven from sound, text, and image.
A fever-dream of haunted Americana, apocalyptic mysticism, and cinematic folk noir, "New Wilderness Gospel" unfolds like a sonic myth – a dark hymn for the Anthropocene, a transmission from the wilderness at the edge of the known world.
With "New Wilderness Gospel", LUX INTERNA evoke a fragmented narrative set against the desolate highways, shadowy Appalachian Mountains, and bone bleached deserts of an America at once raw and mythic. The songs hum with the crackle of unseen voices and the weight of the past bleeding into the present. Prophetic whispers travel through power lines; the silence of the desert swarms with spirits; the deep forest night yields to the presence of an even older darkness.
Musically, "New Wilderness Gospel" presents a spectral tapestry – woven from the deep twang of desert blues, the ghostly echoes of Appalachian folk and gospel, the eerie shimmer of psychedelia and post-punk, and the raw intensity of American Gothic balladry. Beneath it all, warped traces of 1960s girl pop and 1980s new wave flicker like distant radio signals, barely breaking through the static. It is a sound both timeworn and time-lost – haunted by memory, but restless, always reaching forward.
Written during a restless period of road trips in a time of unrelenting storms, wildfires, and a landscape in flux, "New Wilderness Gospel" channels the uncanny blending of inner and outer worlds that occurs in both moments of crisis and contemplation. Guiding listeners on a journey through liminal spaces a ghost-lit passage through the dark night of the soul – it unveils a secret conspiracy between shelter and storm.