Circuit des Yeux - Reaching for Indigo

The Quietus

Much has been made of this remarkable album's backstory: how it was inspired by a mysterious moment of physically debilitating epiphany in Haley Fohr's life which, among other things, left her seeing colours with a painful intensity for several months. This is interesting, but ultimately irrelevant: knowing the details won’t bring the listener any closer to understanding what Reaching For Indigo is “about”. More useful perhaps is the key line from the album's pivotal track: “Stick your head into a paper bag and see just what you find” - immerse yourself in this record and see what speaks to you.

Reaching For Indigo is rooted in the avant-garde music of half a century ago, but never feels retro. It's a modern record, made by a singer with an incredible four-octave baritone range who works as an artist as much as a musician, comfortable with digital technology and collaging techniques, never striving for a naturalistic, ‘live in the studio’ sound. The tropes of romantic art are self-consciously manipulated, but the artifice is made plain, and the finished work feels more real as a result.

‘Brainshift’ alludes to transformation - “Brain shift, came like a tidal wave” - as Fohr’s vocal snakes over minimal keyboards and horns - it’s warm, rich and clearly dangerous as fortified wine. She could be talking about a stroke or a head injury, the stately pace of the song reflecting the attempt to cope with that moment when everything changes, when you can’t remember anyone’s name and feel like all you can do is stand there, taking up space. The formal, impressive quality of the singing contrasts with the almost conversational quality of the words, and a lyrical nod to Alan Vega’s ‘Jukebox Babe’ is telling - there's the same honest, unflinching minimalism here as in Suicide's best work.

‘Black Fly’ sways along in waltz-time, giving it a Jacques Brel/Nina Simone sense of epic melodrama that gradually builds and then disintegrates into sci-fi weirdness. It recalls the first Roxy Music album, with Fohr as both languorous crooner Ferry and subverting scientist Eno. There’s a knowingly sentimental, torch-song fatalism undercut by the rising chaotic tide of sound effects and cut-ups, a futurism that refuses to wallow in romantic notions of doomed heroism - “You’re not the dark star they wanted you to be” - even as it plays with the resonances of such a stance.

The tumbling piano and rolling drums of ‘Philo’ also build up, increasing the tension until Fohr breaks out her best Diamanda Galás on the coda, howling over discordant strings and synth notes. Throughout the record Circuit Des Yeux draw as much on modern jazz and minimalist composition as folk and blues, as also demonstrated by the Terry Riley-like psychedelic swirl of oscillating organ and abstract vocal sounds that make up the first two minutes of ‘Paper Bag’. This standout track then shifts gear into an acoustic, rolling folk-blues over loose driving drums, recalling nothing less than the Tim Buckley of Starsailor, the surface simplicity hardly detracting from the breathtaking intensity of the performance. ‘Paper Bag’ cuts straight into ‘A Story Of This World Pt II’ and I hear them as one epic piece; ‘Story…’ is already in full flight when it begins, a tight avant-garde unit rocking out on a magnificent Crazy Horse-meets-early Velvet Underground groove, with Fohr yelping and ululating over the top, finally speaking in tongues. It’s a wild electrical storm to lose yourself in, furious and elemental.

The album ends with the great descending slab-like church organ chords of ‘Falling Blonde’, Fohr narrating a mysterious incident with a macabre, surrealist tone. As the quivering strings sweep in, the track comes close to self-parody but never crosses the line; the signifiers of gothic melodrama are milked but framed in an almost Lynchian sense of enigmatic detachment. Reaching For Indigo is an album about transformation, and is an act of alchemy in its own right. Stick your head into this bag, and see what you can find.

Share this article:

Tue Nov 21 12:33:30 GMT 2017

Drowned In Sound 90

Every day, I write a lot of words about music. Oftentimes, however, I’m struck with this intense discomfort – and yes, guilt too – at taking records apart and breaking them down. In hindsight, I sometimes feel dirty and voyeuristic about it. Yet still, I can’t help doing it time and time again. Like an intruder in this mysterious exotic world, I’m essentially using my words to taint and domesticate its space. But part of me yearns for some kind of revelation from music, to filter out feelings I have yet to articulate. A great record can draw out these big existential questions. The new Circuit des Yeux LP Reaching for Indigo, provides one answer at least; albeit a very personal, clandestine one to the woman behind the project, Chicago-based musician and composer Haley Fohr.

Fohr – who ardently challenges the notion of a ‘confessional songwriter’ – vows only one thing on opening cut ‘Brainshift’: “I can only promise to take up space”. Throughout these eight tracks, she intuitively navigates within the dark and mysterious space of her psyche: an undomesticated, sometimes precarious landscape bustling with flora and fauna. With that rare quality of sounding both grand and plaintive, Fohr’s voice is accompanied by a prowling organ on ‘Brainshift’, as if scrutinising the terrain up on a hillside. This isn’t exactly a dainty Disney scenario, like an effigy of some ingenue frolicking her way across, breaking into song with anthropomorphic woodland creatures. An ominous horn resounds like a warning: this journey will be treacherous, one of Biblical proportions.

Fohr, a powerful baritone with four octave range, is a great singer: a torrential force which can potentially overtake anyone in the vicinity. Her singing embraces chaos as much as harmony, in similar vein of forebears Diamanda Galas, Scott Walker and Patty Waters. On ‘Black Fly’, surely one of the most majestic and arresting tracks put on record this year, she goes all-out. “Nobody said it was easy/But it was so easy”, she boasts, refusing to succumb like some victim to these crude, untamed emotions. Instead, in the first half of the song, restraint and harmonics are nourished. A lyric like “To stand alone/the breeze in my hair” could easily read like some tacky soundtrack of Pocahontas or Ferngully. The harmony of the song’s avant-folk leanings, however, is eventually met by a buzzing, crawling ecosystem of dissonant noises, something not unlike Werner Herzog’s colourful musing on the “obscenity” of the jungle. But nevertheless beautiful in all its lawlessness and abstraction, recalling Can’s equally opaque masterpiece ‘Sing Swan Song’.

Indeed, there’s a better balance between the unruliness and deftness on Reaching for Indigo than predecessor In Plain Speech. Fohr’s pipes still burrow themselves across the earth with tectonic force, reaching for light. The wistfulness of her voice around 1:20 of ‘Black Fly’, combined with benign strands of acoustic guitar, simply oozes compassion and kindness.. A benevolent ‘reaching out’-moment, instead of shell-shocking the listener like only she can. ‘Black Fly’ is, in many ways, a testament to Fohr’s growth and self-awareness as a composer and songwriter. On Reaching for Indigo as a whole, the potency of her music is expressed as much by gentler means, using more calms to alleviate the listener from her customary emotional maelstroms.

Last week Fohr streamed Reaching for Indigo prematurely on her own website, accompanied with a somewhat Delphic statement. She describes a strange experience overcoming her on January 22 this year. A potent surge of emotion and disarray overcame her from within, it affected her even physically. A transformative experience, she recalls, even she must’ve felt strange, anxiety-ridden and painful at that very moment.

That being said: Fohr spent the bulk of her career overcoming discomfort through sheer will. Before recording In Plain Speech, she realized even her immense vocal presence could be snuffed by chaotic bar banter. So she searched out other voices to amplify her own, musicians Ka Baird, Tyler Damon, Rob Frye, Joshua Abrams and Whitney Johnson, as well as filmmaker Julia Dratel. In the Dratel-directed ‘Doing The Dishes’ video, Fohr appears without clothes, despite her own initial reservations to do so. When someone discouraged her not to go incognito as Jackie Lynn, she did exactly that, exploring her art more playfully and pragmatically. These and the many more challenges she overcame, they all sort of met her own trajectory halfway. For Reaching For Indigo, however, a great deal of Fohr’s trials feel solitary and self-imposed.

Centerpiece ‘Paper Bag’ seems to actually revel in total confusion and disarray. It truly is a psychedelic piece of music, not in this stoner ‘whoa’-kind of way. More urgent. Fohr’s voice convulses and haunts, both frightening and playful, as if channeling a photographic memory of being a newborn pulled from the mother’s womb. When the song springs into gear in full-blown Seventies freak folk splendour, it’s like being wrapped in a warm blanket: safe from harm, yet bombarded by thousands of alien impulses.

Considering the endless flow of information our developed brains are exposed to now, there’s no telling how our imagination will be compromised in the future. Well, Fohr’s imagination is running amok on Reaching For Indigo. This time around, she’s way more comfortable communicating her ideas to her ensemble of musicians. She allows the musicians to interpret them freely, augmenting this potent metaphysical atmosphere further. It all culminates on ’A Story Of This World Part II’, a rousing collaborative live composition that ripostes the more contemplative first act on In Plain Speech. There’s a palpable sense of giddiness here, with Fohr stretching her voice to its utmost limits. On the nocturnal ‘Geyser’, she retreats back into solitude, puzzled over what had happened. Again, with restraint.

Which goes back to the start of this review: the potency of music and its ability to communicate something bigger than a review like this could possibly express or decipher. Music journalists often expect artists to know the ins and outs of what they do, but sometimes, the answer is buried too deep within. And sometimes, there’s no answer at all. People don’t believe in dragons and lost unchartered worlds anymore, because we seemingly conquered both our myths and realities. So it’s hard to accept nothingness once you wholly invest yourself in something – even something as small as a dotted line at the end of a text message. Confusion isn’t something people are naturally celebratory in.

Which is a bit silly when you think about it, as there are plenty everyday things that can suspend our disbelief. Like for instance the colour indigo, which Fohr references on the album: even considering its scientifically undefinable frequencies, it is something we can still sense with our very eyes. There’s a strange comfort in realising this, as our notions of true and false distort more and more. Phenomena no human being will ever fully comprehend do still exist. And, funnily enough, these unknowns often lurk within ourselves. By exploring them through her own singular artistic lens, Circuit des Yeux aptly conceived one of those beautiful anomalies herself. Reaching For Indigo, indeed, is awe personified.

![105174](http://dis.resized.images.s3.amazonaws.com/540x310/105174.jpeg)

Tue Oct 17 16:39:48 GMT 2017

Tiny Mix Tapes 90

Circuit des Yeux
Reaching for Indigo

[Drag City; 2017]

Rating: 4.5/5

“The world wants an oath
but all you can say is
a promise to take up space
I can only promise to take up space”
– “Brainshift”

I‘m unqualified to write about Reaching for Indigo, Haley Fohr’s new album as Circuit des Yeux. Even the trivial task of splitting up the lines above, from the brilliant opener, felt difficult. Because, on the album, Fohr’s phrases unfold fluidly over dense instrumental arrangements, so as to make my own medium, with its arbitrary divisions, seem paltry and dim. (Others feel similarly.) But this music should be written about.

I’ll start with the end. The album closes with “Falling Blonde,” a song about the spectacle of power. Fohr’s agile, operatic vocals tell a story — set to somber synth pop, beat-less yet still beating — about tenability: what can be known, held, and promised in a world in which the only sustainable position seems to be one above another. Thus: the peculiar sadness that saturates the song’s tenderly conjured images of a young blonde who has fallen down in the road, like an allegory for wasted potential. The street lights are changing to green, the crowd is gathering, and they feel the blonde’s dream fading. But the blonde is deaf to their warnings. The sun gets in their eyes, and suddenly, their world is turned upside down: “Hands were in the ground/ Feet were in the sky.” After the fall, Fohr’s poetic delivery morphs from enunciation to vocables that shiver empathetically.

The intensity of the moment made my cheap earbuds crackle, overdriven, the sensation of which made me cry, overwhelmed. Or was I moved by the story, this little drama? If expanded, it could be its own opera. But its message is unclear: are we, the listeners, meant to identify with the fallen blonde or with the crowd that did so little while looking on?

Each song of eight on the album develops its own world of feeling, each in a different mode and with a unique musical setting. As Giovanni Russonello wrote, some are “like laments for lost connections, others like solitary exorcisms.” Taken as a whole, the album feels like a warm, melancholy memory I have of sitting around a stereo one autumn in Indiana. A random series of characters filtered through the room, each offering up a selection to the queue: warped tapes, documents of faded trips, noise records, delicate epiphanies carved into time. In other words, the influences here are many, but they all embrace each other.

The album vacillates between these influences and Fohr’s whole incendiary catalog, from the drifting simplicity of Portrait through to her 2016 alter-ego album by cowgirl Jackie Lynn. “Philo” is overtly minimalist, resembling Terry Riley or La Monte Young piano works, whereas “A Story Of This World Part II” (referring back to Part I, on Fohr’s 2015 album In Plain Speech) is pure post-punk, a jam with a propulsion that makes it feel longer than it is. “Black Fly” is similarly referential, recalling a particular strain of avant-folk, something like the urgency of Joni’s Hissing of Summer Lawns mellowed by the spiderweb guitar beds of Elliott Smith. “Paper Bag” is the sound of lights flickering, things bursting in and out of focus, the sun split up by the shapes of leaves, a small sound lab that demonstrates what the voice can do. And “Geyser,” a love song, is the most distinctive of the set, replete with tiny pitch swells and microbends in the accompaniment parts, which seem to represent the dream cycles Fohr sings about.

Only this music can match life’s mutability. “It all feels the same,” Fohr sings, so dynamically, of days on “Brainshift.” This incision into what she says by how she says it is what makes this music necessary. In 1963, Amiri Baraka wrote, in reference to John Coltrane’s vitality on the album Live at Birdland, “His music is one reason why suicide seems so boring.” When I listen to Reaching for Indigo, I think to myself, so this is what he means. He means we have been given a reason to stick around. “If it is a master we are listening to, we are very likely to be moved beyond the pettiness and stupidity of our beautiful enemies,” Baraka had written, that last word referring, at least a little bit, to himself.

Mon Oct 23 04:04:31 GMT 2017

Pitchfork 82

Haley Fohr’s latest and best record of experimental folk folds in some of the simpler songwriting of her countrified Jackie Lynn project.