Melaina Kol - Okay that’s a great idea because if I do that then Melaina Kol

Melaina Kol, the alias of Nashville-based musician Logan Hornyak, is an ever-changing project. It’s unrecognisable now from what it was in 2018, for example, when he put out the lo-fi twee-pop record Bird Kill Worm, and it’s progressed too from the folktronica songs on 2021’s AMOSAT. Hornyak doesn’t like to get stuck on one thing; every album should be different from the last. “I like to get on motifs or ideas, like a theme, and I like to change the way that I record every single time,” he says.

For his new record, Okay that’s a great idea because if I do that then, Hornyak decided to lean away from guitar and electronics almost altogether. Instead, he taught himself cello and harp and returned to his childhood piano training. He wanted to fuse his long-time enjoyment of classical music with his interest in ambient and house music, the idea being to create an album that took the approach of electronic music using organic sounds. Classical instruments are chopped, looped and layered around a rhythmic pulse. The effect can be disorienting and uncentering, but disarmingly beautiful at the same time.

Hornyak recorded the album between home in Tennessee and a nearby studio. It was his first time getting to use a real studio for Melaina Kol songs, and he wanted the sound to be high-fidelity and stripped of effects. “I basically was like, I don’t even want reverb on anything, I just want it to sound like you’re in the room listening to it,” he says. He paid deeper attention to his performances than he ever had before, focusing on the “micro-details” of each instrumental part before weaving them together.

For all his restless creative energy, Okay that’s a great idea because if I do that then represents Hornyak in a more settled stage of life. “It’s a lot calmer than the last two albums. I did all those albums in my early 20s, when I was going through manic episodes and getting into drugs and stuff,” he says. “But I would say this album is kinda like the other end of that — the coming out of that, I would say. In my life, I feel a lot more at peace, and I feel like the album translates that.”