The Look of Neo-Femme Fatale Darkwave on M, the Leonie Mac Album with Audiothrillseeker
The Look of Neo-Femme Fatale Darkwave on M, the Leonie Mac Album with Audiothrillseeker
Cellos, Synths and Lyrics by Poet Dave Migman Shape the Australian Singer’s 2019 Album
Demimondaine is a song about pleasure-seekers and courtesans. Its video pays tribute to Black+White, the Australian arts and pop culture magazine of the 1990s. Leonie Mac made both for M, the seven-song album she released in April 2019 with the producer Audiothrillseeker. The look sets the terms for the record: art rock and darkwave, with the singer cast as a femme fatale.
Leonie Mac’s ballad Too Far Away is in the playlist below, and her full run of coverage sits on her artist profile. M came to AltPop.News through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news titles. Press play on the ballad, then read on.
Mac calls M a neo-femme fatale study of womanhood. Love and death, rage and paranoia, play and devotion all take a turn across its seven songs, and five of them also got videos of their own. Crazy Sexy Cool (Night Walker), for example, plays on her name. Leonie means lion-like, and her family’s Scottish clan has a wildcat as its totem. So the opening track becomes a portrait of a divine feline, or of something pretending to be one.
Her career, however, runs further back than M suggests. In the 1990s she was signed to Albert Productions, the Sydney independent best known for AC/DC. Her lyrics have since been recognised at the National Song Writers Competition, and the Australia Council for the Arts has funded her to develop original material. M then followed her debut album of 2015.
Leonie Mac Wrote the Album M With Two Partners, From Michael Szumowski’s Ballad to Audiothrillseeker’s Darkwave
Two partners shape the album. Michael Szumowski co-wrote the ballad Too Far Away, with the lyrics credited to Mac under her full name, Leonie Macpherson. Audiothrillseeker, the stage name of the producer and soundscaper Fabian Weston, produced the record and co-wrote much of the rest.
Above all, that song’s arrangement leans on strings. Cellos and piano give it weight, synths run underneath, and Mac’s voice sits at the centre. She describes it as a timeless ballad about turning a broken heart into art.
That mix of strings and electronics has a famous ancestor in the Bristol sound, which Mac counts among her influences. On Unfinished Sympathy in 1991, Massive Attack first wrote the orchestral part on a synthesiser, then swapped it for real strings recorded at Abbey Road. Mac’s ballad keeps both side by side.
Elsewhere the record moves between moods. For instance, the opening track starts low and heavy before it picks up pace, while Demimondaine feels lighter on its feet. The words to the closing song, Take Me With You, come from the poet Dave Migman, who also makes a special appearance on the track.
Audiothrillseeker Hid Sounds Under The Cat and the Canary, Leonie Mac’s Headphone Track on M
Weston’s real subject as Audiothrillseeker is mood. He works as a soundscaper as well as a producer, and the album’s copyright line names him alongside Mac. Still, the clearest example of that craft is The Cat and the Canary, a trip into what Mac calls a paranoid underworld.
The track hides threatening, attention-seeking sounds and subliminal messages under the song. Mac recommends headphones and a dark room for the full effect, which tells you how carefully the layers were placed. In short, it is a production choice made for close listening.
The approach also points back to Bristol. Portishead won the 1995 Mercury Prize with Dummy, built from Geoff Barrow’s production around Beth Gibbons’ voice, and its cover is a still of Gibbons from the band’s own short film. M works in a similar way, with a producer shaping the space and a singer who is also the image. Across the album Mac uses a wide vocal range, and Weston builds his layers around it, from the string ballad to the darker electronic tracks.
The record has travelled since. When TunedLoud reviewed it in February 2022, it called the album pure genius. In 2023 Good Music Radar reviewed the ballad, and the Brazilian site Os Garotos de Liverpool introduced M to its readers.
AltPop.News’s curator team: “Take Me With You closes M at six minutes and sixteen seconds, the longest song on the album, and Mac shares it with the poet who wrote its words. Ending a femme fatale record by handing over part of the spotlight is the most surprising move here, and the one we keep returning to.”
Leonie Mac Made Videos for Five Songs From the Album M, and Her YouTube Channel Holds Them All
The visual side is easy to explore, because her YouTube channel carries the videos for Too Far Away, shot by the photographer Simon Mottram, plus Demimondaine, Casanova, The Cat and the Canary and a short promo for Crazy Sexy Cool. Mac sums up Casanova as a fractured fairy tale about blind love, with a killer chorus.
M will suit listeners who move between alternative pop, art rock, synthwave and darkwave, and anyone who likes a record with a strong persona at its centre. Play the album in the player above or stream it on Apple Music, find more of her catalogue on Amazon Music, and follow Leonie Mac on Spotify. Watch the videos on YouTube, and keep up with her on Instagram and Facebook.
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