Kristin Hayter will retire her beloved experimental project Lingua Ignota in early 2023. Known for composing bracing, cross-genre epics, Hayter said the decision would promote her mental health and prevent her from being “mired in the past,” as she put it on Instagram this morning (November 2). “This time last year I was non-functional,” she wrote. “Then, out of desperation, I gave myself permission to heal for the first time.” Her final performances, including her imminent fall tour and “a few things in early 2023,” will go ahead.
The statement continued, in part, “I will not allow my wounds to destroy me. I want to live a healthy, happy life and have changed much in myself and my surroundings to bring light in. As such the art has to change too. It is not healthy for me to relive my worst experiences over and over through LI, and my healing has finally allowed me to *feel* how painful that is. I am taking a new direction with my music and I am looking forward to the future. I want to let you know in light of some (very cool) things that will be announced soon that I am retiring this catalog, this pain. This era is over for me.”
In an additional statement shared with Pitchfork, Hayter said:
Hayter launched the Lingua Ignota project in 2017 with a pair of self-released albums, Let the Evil of His Own Lips Cover Him and All Bitches Die, each containing just a handful of songs but traversing a breadth of genres and musical eras—hymnal folk, sampled radio chatter, apocalyptic sound design, and occasional crashing percussion, with vocals that stretched between simmering murmurs and operatic tragedy. She expanded the sound with her 2019 album, Caligula, using distortion and electronics to meld opera, metal, and noise, while “burning misogyny to ash from its Judeo-Christian roots,” as Jenn Pelly wrote in her Pitchfork review. Hayter’s next (and seemingly final) album as Lingua Ignota, Sinner Get Ready, featured Appalachian instruments and televangelist sermons.