Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter

Doors open at 5:30pm. The kitchen will close at 7:30pm when the performance starts.

“incorporating gospel, blues and bluegrass into a washed-out image of American folk” – Pitchfork

2023’s SAVED! is an apocalyptic revelation on the complex, sometimes ugly, always nonlinear process of healing. Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter documents an earnest attempt to achieve salvation through the tenets of charismatic Christianity. She focuses on the Pentecostal-Holiness Movement, which dictates that one’s closeness to God is demonstrated through transcendental personal experience. 

The record concludes logically and marks a significant sonic and thematic departure from Hayter’s previous work as Lingua Ignota. She sheds the moniker that brought her success for its unflinching expression of lived trauma. Instead, she rebuilds herself, claiming her full given name, and determines to see value within. Moreover, she uses historical avant-garde techniques and formal constraints superimposed over accessible frameworks. She also strips down her instrumentation and degrades audio to provide a sense of musicological antiquity. 

Similar to Lingua Ignota, the record is steeped in pathos, but now the wrath of God gives way to His deliverance: “His boundless love shall make you whole.” She evokes the lonely roads of salvation-seeking, using a piano prepared with bells and chains, the earthly and celestial. However, SAVED! remains stark, confining itself mostly to vocals, sometimes overdubbing them into a dissonant chorus of twelve simultaneous voices. She achieves speaking in tongues by self-imposing a variety of conditions: sleep deprivation, fasting, repetition of prayer and sensory overstimulation. 

SAVED! renounces life, finding solace in absolute retreat from the world, far from pain and sin, burning with the holy fire until the end comes. As it is written: as you are when the end comes, so will you be when you must face Him. Whether this is enlightenment or insanity is up to the listener to decide.

Recommended for Fans of Lingua Ignota, Chelsea Wolfe, Emma Ruth Rundle and Zola Jesus.