LYDIA AINSWORTH
Announces New Album Phantom Forest
Out May 10
Premieres New Video "Can You Find Her Place" on The Fader
 |
Photo credit: Bryan Huynh
|
"Lydia Ainsworth doesn't so much subvert pop music, but skates around its edges... [She] blurs melodies and rote formats with a sense of mystery." -
NPR
"Among pop music's experimental architects, Lydia Ainsworth has a unique knack for making grand sweeping gestures feel human." - PITCHFORK
"Ainsworth creates enough comforting fantasies to make us all feel at ease." -STEREOGUM
Lydia Ainsworth, the acclaimed singer/songwriter/producer, announced her third album Phantom Forest today, due out May 10. The record, the follow up to 2017's Darling of the Afterglow and her first since relocating from Toronto to Los Angeles, is themed around the precarious state of nature in the modern world. The Fader announced the album today and premiered the video for the first single "Can You Find Her Place," calling the single "one of her catchiest compositions yet" and adding, " Ainsworth's vocals work in tandem to catch light and color from new and exciting angles."
Ainsworth describes the track as "a song about Mother Nature's elusive yet powerful strength in the face of adversity. I'm singing a number of the songs on Phantom Forestfrom the perspective of Mother Nature and her views on humanity's hubris, however on 'Can You Find Her Place' I am using my voice as a kind of Greek chorus singing about where you can find her strength, setting the scene for Phantom Forest." The ornate video was inspired by Botticelli's painting "Primavera."
 |
Ainsworth produced Phantom Forest herself, and wrote all the songs with the exception of the closing track "Green Is The Color," a Pink Floyd cover, and "The Time" and "Give It Back To You," which she co-wrote with Kyle Dixon of Survive (Stranger Things).
Phantom Forest is due out May 10 and is available for pre-order HERE.
Lydia Ainsworth - Phantom Forest - May 10, 2019
1. Diamonds Cutting Diamonds
2. Tell Me I Exist
3. Can You Find Her Place
4. Edge Of The Throne
5. Kiss The Future
6. The Time
7. Give It Back To You
8. Floating Dream
9. Green Is The Color (Pink Floyd cover)
MORE ON PHANTOM FOREST:
Lydia Ainsworth's third album, Phantom Forest, introduces a lush, complex dream world that the singer, composer, and producer created and inhabited largely on her own. She produced all the songs, and wrote and performed everything on the self-released collection outside of a re-imagined cover of Pink Floyd's "Green is the Color" and two other tracks ("The Time," "Give It Back To You"), which started as instrumentals written by Survive's Kyle Dixon (who composed the Stranger Things soundtrack with his bandmate Michael Stein), to which Ainsworth wrote melodies and added lyrics.
Ainsworth, who's relocated to Los Angeles from Toronto since 2017's Darling of the Afterglow, explains that the collection revealed itself to her "as a play taking place in Mother Nature's vanishing home," aka Phantom Forest, and that she's singing from three perspectives: herself, Mother Nature, and Greek Chorus. For instance, of the album's opener, "Diamonds Cutting Diamonds," she explains: "The Greek Chorus sets the scene, narrating and offering direction on how to enter Phantom Forest. It's my hope that the listener will imagine the narration to be directed to them as well, as they begin the journey of the album."
You'll get a sense of this from the collection's edenic cover art and the playful, pastoral video for the album's first single, "Can You Find Her Place." Its inspiration came from Ainsworth's love for Italian Renaissance painter Botticelli's 15-century masterpiece "Primavera," an allegorical representation of the burgeoning fertility of the earth in spring. She notes: "The video features the Greek gods of the painting in a choreographed Baroque style dance." Keeping with the personal feel of the collection, her sister Abby Ainsworth directed the clip.
In line with the classical and historical depths of Phantom Forest, Ainsworth, who holds a Masters Degree in film scoring composition from NYU and studied composition as an undergrad at McGill, notes that although the album might be considered pop, she approached it as an orchestrator. "Even if I'm dealing purely with synths," she says, "The songs are like a score, each one an evolving journey. I love to use strings so I've included my string arrangements on 'Tell Me I Exist' and 'Can You Find Her Place.' I recorded live musicians on drums, bass, and guitar on 'Edge of the Throne,' 'The Time,' and 'Floating Dream,' and wove those live elements into my programmed elements."
Phantom Forest is a beautiful, vast collection that mixes the historical and the hands on, with hooks about the apocalypse and people obsessively using face-recognition software to see what paintings their face match with, in search of some kind of connection. It's a journey that holds up to close listening (and lyric reading) and to dance floors, but that can also exist on a purely emotional plane. In all cases, it asks that you listen, and take some kind of action.
No comments:
Post a Comment