Photograph EP by Keeley Forsyth

Keeley Forsyth follows up her critically lauded debut album, Debris, with the Photograph EP. Across four tracks the domestic tensions remain, albeit taking a more introspective view. Forsyth’s striking vocals are cocooned within otherworldly synthesisers - they transport her words across continents before snapping back to the room. The walls closing in. There’s an aching sense of detachment, which resonates with the circumstances in which it was written.

“I always work from home,” Forsyth explains. “This time, the isolation had a new influence on my lyrical ideas. I was contemplating the idea of homesickness within the home; when life is lived on the domestic grid, in rooms and in tasks. I was looking to reframe the day, to give sound to the picture.”

Photograph takes two steps on from Debris’ electronic closer ‘Start Again’. Continuing the fruitful working relationship with composer Matthew Bourne and bringing Trestle Records’ Ross Downes into the fray, it hints at the vast possibilities open to Forsyth on her next album, and also brings the late period Scott Walker comparisons into focus, with traditional song structures giving way to something more expansive. Cloaked in darkness but seeking surreal beauty and art in the debris of modern life.

“Ross and I worked closely on the video,” says Forsyth. “We discussed the absurdism of Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionescu and Antonin Artaud and the movements of the Tanztheater tradition, all of which has influenced the music I’ve been writing. We were working towards a place where archetypes, expectations and behaviour are unclear - a woman feeds her family with soil while digging her grave.”

Keeley Forsyth is a composer, singer and actor from Oldham in the north-west of England.

keeleyforsyth.com
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