Circuit des Yeux has released ‘Truth’, the final preview of her new album Halo On the Inside ahead of its release this Friday, March 14th. Warped and transcendent, darkly romantic and thrillingly alien, the album is Fohr’s boldest work to date.
A phantasmagoric club cut propelled by broken rhythms, elastic bass, hammond organ, and Fohr’s mesmeric mantra “truth is just imagination of the mind”, the single is accompanied by a video starring Circuit des Yeux (aka Haley Fohr), directed by Cuan Roche.
Speaking of the song, CdY says: “If “Truth” were an object it would be a multi-faced geode that is in constant rotation. Its meaning is continually shifting and lending itself to the way the listener perceives it. The root of its creation comes from a vivid dream I had in 2015 while staying in Blackrock Territory just outside of Dublin, Ireland.”
‘Truth’ follows previous singles/videos ‘Canopy Of Eden’ and ‘Megaloner’. NPR described the latter as “the sound of bones being ground into bread,” while calling Fohr “[An] artist who cuts through so much noise with her art.” In their album review, Uncut said, “Chicago’s Haley Fohr has said making this album enabled her ‘to rewind myself to a time before fear’, which partly explains its fusion of the sacred/ otherworldly and the carnal in songs you might call club gothic, did it not diminish their nuanced, darkly intoxicating power. Her strikingly rich, four-octave voice is the axis around which producer Andrew Broder has directed dark ambient, degraded bassmusic, industrial pop and dungeon synth, with feedback and software fubars playing their part.”
A musician, composer, and multidisciplinary artist, Fohr’s work defies easy categorisation. It has encompassed critically acclaimed albums, free-form improvisation, painting, audio visual installations, and large ensemble compositions. She has performed in an anechoic chamber (a room with no echo), written for a 50-piece children’s choir, and plunged from a rooftop (under the supervision of a stunt-coordinator).
Bringing Halo to fruition involved numerous changes in Fohr’s typical methods of operation. She worked at night. Throughout the writing, Fohr was living alone, slipping down to her basement studio from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. to free her mind, her voice, her hands. These late hours should not be understood as grim and isolative, though. It was a quiet space for uninhibited exploration.
These graveyard shift writing sessions resulted in a revelation for the musician. “I found a very surprising, small voice in me, and it was deep, deep behind my heart,” Fohr says. She discovered it in the solitary quiet of her studio space, with the city outside hushed enough for Fohr to hear the rhythms of her organs in sync with one another—her own inner symphony. She continued working around that concept for eight more months, carving Halo on the Inside out of her reinvigorated relationships with solitude and herself. And then she looked outward.
A trip to Greece ignited in Fohr an interest in the character of Pan, the mythological, flute playing half-goat, half-man. His story of transformation, melody, fertility, and eventual demise served as a moodboard to the album’s rapturous, brightly burning moments.
The process was adjourned in a trip to Minneapolis to complete the record with producer Andrew Broder (Bon Iver, Moor Mother, Lambchop). The album’s centrepiece, Cathexis, puts the pair’s creative chemistry on full display. Haley’s seemingly limitless voice interplays with Broder’s cathartic guitar coda, offering perhaps the album’s most ascendant moment.
The center of Halo remains Fohr’s voice. It is a powerful, seemingly supernatural instrument — a four-octave span that can span gentle melodic hooks, animalistic bleats, and elemental wails. Here, Fohr makes use of its full range in maximalist compositions that swerve fearlessly between genres and styles. “Through the process of making this music I was able to rewind myself to a time before fear,” she says. “And in the absence of fear I found the intimate beat of sex, love, and melody”.
There’s shock in metamorphosis, Halo On The Inside tells us, but there’s also levity and beauty. A moment of seclusion and dislocation yielding to rebirth and ominous beauty.
Circuit des Yeux – Halo On The Inside
TRACK LIST
- Megaloner
- Canopy of Eden
- Skeleton Key
- Anthem of Me
- Cosmic Joke
- Cathexis
- Truth
- Organ Bed
- It Takes My Pain Away
CIRCUIT DES YEUX
