Janel Leppin - Slowly Melting (2026)

Tracklist

01. Zonk
02. Dizzy
03. The Brink Is Home
04. Dirge
05. Germanium
06. Mk1
07. L.a. Land
08. Slowly Melting
09. Kaffa House

Cellist and composer Janel Leppin returns with Slowly Melting, the simultaneously released solo companion to her Ensemble Volcanic Ash: Pluto in Aquarius set. Leppin plays cello, guitar, bass, a Prophet-Five synth, and piano in compositions, improvisations, and soundscapes for cello. Over eight pieces recorded at The Brink in Richmond, Virginia, and one at Janel's Room studio, she articulates a genreless space where her own musical obsessions including jazz, chamber music, experimental improvisation, and rock, become a holistic entity greater than the individual parts.
Opener Zonk weds plucked cello strings, guitar, droning synth, and distortion; Leppin finds subtle melodies that emerge under the primary theme; spaces and textures wind around each other in an episodic flow. Dizzy follows with an intro that derives from blues under a five-note finger-plucked guitar pattern. It's unhurried, gradual, and poignant. Leppin's cello establishes a circular melody altered by each succeeding chorus. There's a low-end distorted cello that touches on doom metal in the introduction to Dirge. Almost immediately, it's followed by airier textures in a gorgeous modal melody adorned by a solo above synth, overdubbed cellos, and guitar. Geranium is a work of emotional resonance and great tenderness as strummed guitars and mallet-dampened piano frame Leppin's sojourn into lyric ether. Mk1 is initiated by a piano pattern in the instrument's lower-middle register buoying her distorted, mournful cello exchanging lyric melody and improvisation, feedback, fuzz, and restrained droning power. L.A. Land weds strummed and picked acoustic guitar into distant echo as Leppin begins trading fours with her cello. Deliberately midtempo, the textural and musical economy allow the gauzy skeleton of a song to emerge. The title track is a labyrinth. A powerfully distorted sustain-pedaled cello soars above a bassline, layered guitars, and synth. It walks a loose line between psychedelia, folk melody, ambient minimalism, and rockist circularity. Kaffa House, the only track recorded in Leppin's home studio is, simply put, a composition for solo cello with repetition, improvisation, and humor as dissonance meets lyric melody, a jazz cadence, and a rhythm that approaches spidery acoustic funk.
In sum, Slowly Melting is a stronger outing than her previous solo work, New Moon in the Evil Age. For starters, despite the volume, distortion, and feedback, it is a lighter album, with more pronounced melodies and modes, and improvisation that enhance a composition's structural architecture rather than derive from it. It is an album of great emotion and impeccable taste, not to mention imagination and fantastic technique.