Circuit des Yeux has released new song and video, ‘The Manatee (A Story of This World Pt. III)’. Recorded during the sessions for last year’s masterful and multi-layered full-length -io, ‘The Manatee’ is a shift in mood – serene astral folk sewn up with whirring aquatic interludes. Listen to the song and watch the Rudy Rubio-direct video HERE.
Circuit des Yeux’s Haley Fohr says:“At 4:30 A.M. on February 4th, 2020 a manatee popped out of the sea and stared directly at me. It was a charged 10 seconds. The experience stuck with me so much that I wrote a song about it.
The music video (directed by Rudy Rubio) is a depiction of my own kind of manatee. I play a wet sea creature trying to make it work in a dry-land society. It is inspired by the scientific understanding that the manatee crawled into the ocean 50,000,000 years ago. The manatee is my reminder that intuition and two legs might be all a person needs to find a more hospitable world – perhaps an undiscovered place to call home.”
Circuit des Yeux has also announced European and North American tour dates for 2022. This includes a special performance at the Barbican Centre’s Milton Court Concert Hall accompanied by a quintet of soloists from the London Contemporary Orchestra on April 6th. A full list of dates can be found below.
Last week, guitarist and songwriter Steve Gunn released a new five-song EP, Nakama, which features Circuit des Yeux’s re-work of ‘Ever Feel That Way’. Listen HERE.
Listen to Circuit des Yeux new contribution to Crack Magazine’s Sunday Mix series HERE.
Out now, -io is the sixth album and Matador Records debut by Circuit des Yeux (Haley Fohr). It is her most ornate and elaborate work to date – a set of compositions that nest the singer’s otherworldly four-octave voice amid a 24-piece string, brass, and wind ensemble. While Fohr’s music has never been short on ambition, these songs are striking in their brilliance and strangeness. On -io, Circuit des Yeux has delivered a work that is vivid, immense, and fully illuminated.
BARBICAN CENTRE SPECIAL PERFORMANCE FEATURING STRING QUINTET FROM THE LONDON CONTEMPORARY ORCHESTERA – APRIL 6TH
NEW ALBUM -IO OUT NOW
50 Releases of the Year 2021 (#9) – The Wire
Top 50 Albums of The Year (#14) – Crack
“The undimmed impact of Fohr’s voice – a tarry, cold-pressed blend of Nico and Anohni – is an unsurprisingly vital component of its uncanny negative-space chill, but it’s underpinned by the sheer intergalactic drama of her arrangements” – MOJO ****
“Fohr gives her emotions that magnificent and terrifying magnitude through her lyrics, as well as her instrumentation” – The Quietus
“… strikingly original” – The Times ****
