The music of New York City duo SYBLING — the project of sisters Alice and Mariana Makwaia — could just as easily serve as the soundtrack for the folk horror films they find themselves inspired by, shrouded as it is in their love of eerily intricate instrumentals and bewitching harmonies. Like the prophetic sibyl of Greek mythology (to whom their moniker partially alludes), their songs materialize as portentous confrontations with all the foreboding inner demons that plague the human heart and mind.
Classically trained from a young age the siblings of SYBLING both arrived at their musical inclinations at different times. Alice, the multi-instrumentalist and self-confessed introvert of the two started writing as early as four years old; while Mari, who directs her talents toward production and percussion, didn’t start seeing her poetry as a path to songwriting until high school.
Yet despite their individual routes, the two have always entwined each other in their art. For as long as they can remember they’ve enjoyed singing and harmonizing with one another — and once Mari returned home from college they started to seriously consider releasing the music they’d been fiddling around with.
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A common theme in their growth and collaboration is how the two sisters seem to complete one another in temperament and experience. Alice’s work as a composer — creating scores for both the theater and film — lends itself to the project’s cinematic scope. Mari’s time as singer and band leader for the soul/funk outfit Smoke and Sugar, which self-released a debut EP in 2017, gave them a leg up in the recording process.
Together, they evoke the lush resonance of contemporaries like CocoRosie and Fleet Foxes, but their commitment to what they refer to as folk noir lies in their appreciation of everything from 1960s singer/songwriters to Celtic and Indigenous artists. Though unsurprisingly, they’ve also admitted that the horror genre is a great source of inspiration.
Their debut self-titled EP Sybling came in 2019, with songs like “The Grim” and “La Baleine” immediately grounding their sound in a dually beguiling and haunting realm. From twinkling piano keys flickering like ominous will-o’-wisps within dark soundscapes to the spry acoustic strings that flutter alongside their enchanting harmonies. While its broodingly mesmeric outro “She Is Still Alive in the Past” is perhaps the best case to be made that these two should be scoring the next A24 folk horror film.
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Fast forward four years, and SYBLING has returned with their second EP Strange Ways. All five songs on the collection immerse you in the phantasmic world they seek to conjure into existence. Its opening track “Rosemary” is a reverent incantation that reveals their vocals’ entrancing and otherworldly potency. Both “Radio,” with its grim pleadings, and the lilting ballad “Lullaby (Berceuse Roumain)” conjure the full force of their irresistible atmospherics.
On “Lakehouse,” which opens with an unnerving gust of wind and the creak of a doorway, they invite you into the terrifyingly liminal spaces of their imagination. If there was ever a more appropriate body of music to immerse yourself into in honor of the Halloween season, it is, without a doubt, the theme of SYBLING.
Words: Steven Ward
Visit SYBLING on their website and Instagram to stay updated on new releases and tour announcements.
Listen to Strange Ways the new EP from SYBLING.
