Midwife & Vyva Melinkolya Orbweaving

Madeline Johnston and Angel Diaz became close friends in 2020, regarding each other as a lifeline when things were difficult in their personal lives. This friendship was born from music but quickly became so much more than that. The two met in person in 2021, when Diaz came for a recording residency at Johnston’s studio in New Mexico. It was during this session that they wrote and recorded Orbweaving, in the heat of summer in the arid Chihuahuan Desert.

Orbweaving combines the best parts of Midwife’s “heaven metal” and Vyva Melinkolya’s sentimental, classic shoegaze in a way that distinctively elevates both artists. The record explores themes of hopelessness, calling on a higher power, being alone, and the sublime horror of the natural world. Orbweaving seeks to thematically and sonically create a web like structure—a gauze of sorrow and visceral connective thread.

At night, Diaz and Johnston went herping (a term used by herpetologists to describe looking for snakes and amphibians) along the empty roads near Las Cruces. The asphalt retains heat from the day, and the snakes absorb the warmth by writhing across the pavement.

They found rattlesnakes, roadkill, and orb-weaver spiders.