Laughing Eye Weeping Eye
Somewhere between the black soil of earth and the void, exists the music of Laughing Eye Weeping Eye. These are songs that travel through the unknown and esoteric. Like her Tarot readings, Rebecca Schoenecker leads us through the arcane, with lush vocals from gothic cathedrals and harmonium played in secret rooms. Patrick Holbrook, her consort, adds organ inspired keyboard drones and strings via ukelin and turkish spike fiddle. The mundane mixes with the alchemical; the flesh transverses the metaphysical. The result is chilling and sparse. LEYE WEYE's third full length album Once Was You is coming out on Moon Glyph in late Summer 2015. Their Medieval-inspired second LP, Beway was released by Hairy Spider Legs in 2013. Their previous releases include Where Snakes & Seers Go (LP, 2011), and Lies The Shadow (EP, 2010). They have toured in North America since 2010, sharing bills with Arrington de Dionyso's Malaikat dan Singa, Spires That in the Sunset Rise, The Cherry Blossoms, Circuit des Yeux, Happy Jawbone Family Band, Wildbirds & Peacedrums, Mind Over Mirrors, Ashley Paul, Ruby Fray, and many others.

New album Once Was You now on Moon Glyph on tape and MP3

"These are patient songs, building atmosphere from sometimes seemingly nothing at all, offering the occasional climax but mostly devoted to creating meditative space for the listener. There’s a lightness even to the most layered drones here, and at the same time a seriousness of intent and unity of purpose that keep things balanced and compelling. The result, in the trim 30 minutes of Once Was You, evokes everyone from Eluvium to Julianna Barwick to Espers and exists in a world that almost no other bands reach."
-Dusted In Exile

"Laughing Eye Weeping Eye play buzzing, ancient-sounding tunes whose stately harmonies and compelling drones remind this wolf of Dead Can Dance and Nico. It can't hurt that singer and harmonium pumper Rebecca Schoenecker is also a tarot reader—she can definitely cast musical spells, especially with help from the band's other half, Patrick Holbrook, whose arsenal of stringed instruments includes Turkish spike fiddle and ukelin."
-The Chicago Reader

"Schoenecker haunts the ancient-sounding recording with Juliana Barwick-esque drift that soars to fill high-vaulted spaces with celebratory choral worship.... Listening to Once Was You’s heavy portents is like stumbling onto some rain-swept heath and receiving chance prophecy, only to realise all too late that the divining sages from whom such promise came were in fact Sirens and your future that merely of dust and shadows."
-[sic] Magazine

"this spine tingling set of brief invocations has been giving me a hell of a lot of joy recently.... It’s a hugely beautiful listen, drifting along like a Wicker Man dream sequence lead by Schoenecker’s wonderful voice."
-The Quietus

"If anything were ever this pagan on the daily for me, I’d’ve probably already made a house of leaves and full of insects.... Encapsulated in vibration harmoniously resonating throughout the insides of all humans, whether or not they listen. The eclipse of Laughing Eye Weeping Eye dawns upon “Earth” as an all-powerful and imprisoned vessel. Though, there’s much more to explain within Once Was You."
-Tiny Mix Tapes

Beway (2013) on vinyl, MP3, or CD-R >>

"Beway achieves, in various forms, a sonorous, bewitching, and intrepidly daring level of sui generis noisemaking, carving out an odd, medieval-y quirk of a niche that the muse of wildest Canterbury must have reserved especially for them.... Beway is close to astonishing.... there simply won’t be anything like it heard this year." - Dave Cantrell, Caught in the Carousel

"Get medieval, indulge in the rites and rituals of Summer and turn back those hands of time with Laughing Eye Weeping Eye with their pagan-pageantry for Beway. The duo of Rebecca Schoenecker and Patrick Holbrook craft a call from the metaphysics of the ancients." - Sjimon Gompers, Impose Magazine

Buy the 2011 album Where Snakes & Seers Go on vinyl and MP3 >>

"... every now and then, something really weird comes along and sweeps me off my feet, smothering me with smooches. That’s Laughing Eye Weeping Eye. This shit is wacky as fuck and it’s the only time I’ve deemed “freak folk” an appropriate & relevant descriptor." - Anti-Gravity Bunny

"LEWE is intriguing for how it avoids freak folk mainstays like the blues and 60s folk, instead channeling a new set of sources yet to be tapped by any weirdos I've come across in the contemporary moment.... Weird like the vocals. Schoenecker's creepy chirps, sighing glissandos, whiney drones and operatic falsettos. Weird like the instrumentation, pumped with a heavy dose of harmonium, harps, hand-claps and horns, tambourines, bells, flutes and fiddles (NOT violins...), etc. ...Where Snakes & Seers Go triumphs due to the fact that it's a good band, doing weird things in weird new ways, and doing all of those things quite weirdly-well. They make an unbearably creepy voice listenable, relatable. They put that voice into charming, inventive songs. Some of those songs are actually very, very beautiful—"River of Golden Treasures" is sleeping-tune mixtape worthy with its gorgeous, humbling melodic meditations. Overall, great new band..." - Tome to the Weather Machine

"a tale where words celebrate, commune, play, enchant, make potions and color the ride you're taken on, where sounds make the unreal become reality… and the more i hear and feel, i grow a tail, some nice horns; i begin to twist and clap but mostly want to meow." - microphones in the trees

"Inspired by folk music and gospel singing, the music of Laughing Eye Weeping Eye sounds like little else around at the moment, blissful melodies sung and chanted, screamed and wailed, over a droning harmonium, handclaps, loops and toy instruments. Contrast the sweetness of album opener “Venus” with the shamanic vibe of “Chant”, the former almost a hymn, sung beautifully, whilst the latter sees the vocals wailed like banshees, bringing to mind Larkin Grimm or Tara Burke. The rest of the album moves between these points, always interesting, filled with imagination, and well worth you time with “On The Path”, “River of Golden Treasures” and “Aye Yai Yai Yai” being particular favourites, the first of these sounding exactly like The Cherry Blossoms, so much so in fact that I had to check the personnel on each album to see if there was a connection, there isn't. Containing that same strange mystical vibe as early Incredible String Band offerings, “Where Snakes and Seers Go” is a collection of songs that will curl up in your heart until it becomes an old friend." - Terrascope

"... the voices begin to tremble together and form overtones and shamanic inspirations. This is created from a special, rather magical atmosphere, which is held strongly and similarly throughout the album." - psychedelicfolk.com

Laughing Eye Weeping Eye performances are akin to watching a vaudevillian story-teller in a medival church with gospel singers, gnomes, and goats. Bandmates in this lifetime and gurus in another, Chicagoans Rebecca Schoenecker and Patrick Holbrook create a multi-faceted experience that incorporates harmonium, looped vocals, toy instruments, visuals, and effects. Inspired by folk music and spiritual singing, LEWE creates songbooks for audience members so that they may sing along. On occasion, the bliss of this act has led to singing in tongues

FREE downloads from the 2010 EP Lies the Shadow >>

Contact us: leyeweye {at} gmail {dot} com