Los Angeles theremin player and composer ALIA announces her debut album Where Echoes Bloom, following 2025’s Harold Budd cover in collaboration with Nailah Hunter. It is an exploration of atmosphere through cultural influences paired with a performance prowess over audio technology and novel instrumentation.

“I wanted to showcase the hauntingly beautiful voice of the theremin as well as the intimate, melancholic sound of the kacapi, a Javanese zither,” writes Alia. “I set them to a backdrop of lush pads I created on my Arturia Microfreak and Korg Minilogue along with lots of shimmering reverb to create ethereal, otherworldly soundscapes that are, at times, hypnotic.”

The record is informed by a unique meeting point of geographies, influences, creative practices, and mentors. Via her father, the Lebanese percussionist Jamal Mohamed, Alia grew up around Levantine jazz and other widespread musics. She studied raqs sharqi - better known as belly dance - and Arabic music, as well as learning the kacapi from the Indonesian pandit Ade Suparman. Later, she adopted the theremin after seeing an LA performance by Iranian-Armenian musician Armen Ra, to employ “like a human voice, but strange and magical. I like to incorporate it into various styles of music in unexpected ways.” An in-demand session player, Alia is also a member of pop musician Melanie Martinez’ touring band.

In collaboration with her father, Alia describes laying out “the bones of a song, and he sent me percussion using various instruments such as bells, brushes, woodblocks, cajon, Moroccan bongos. I experimented with heavy processing on some of the percussion to where the samples used ended up being completely different to the original sound.“ The record was produced entirely by Alia at home, where she also performed the theremin, kacapi, and synthesis, alongside field recordings from a multitude of locations: “I used field recordings of frogs and birds from the rice fields of Bali, and also recorded the sound of water drops in my bathtub. I wanted the album to have a diegetic quality, for things to feel warm and tangibly wet at times, for people to feel like they are in a real place, that feels unknown and slightly strange but at the same time warm and welcoming.” These real world sounds are synthesized with representations of the same natural phenomena, here performed for the theremin to yield effective results.

Opening single “Endless Love” begins with intimate, breathy voice, from which blooms sensuous zither-led exotica both longing and subverted, underpinned with subtle precision. Another key moment, “Crescent Sun” is darker, led with shadowy programmed bass synthesis and arpeggiated zither plucks to accompany the silk road imagery of its title.

“The hardest part about making this album was staying focused at such a devastating time in history,” she tells us. “My heart was broken open by the genocide in Palestine while making this. The opening track is titled “Soul of my Soul” in tribute to martyrs Khaled Nabhan and his granddaughter Reem while “The Thorn and the Carnation” pays homage to Yahya Sinwar.”