In October 2024, Haley Fohr, underneath her Circuit des Yeux moniker, launched “God Dick,” an awesome barrage of texture accompanied by lyrics invoking the phallic divine. Dissonant strings balloon, giving option to colossal synthesizers, frantic programmed beats at 170 BPM, and, after all, Fohr’s flexile voice, notably capable of span 4 octaves. “God dick in my means,” she intones, darkly: “Horns rising, phallus dei.”
Such depth tends to gas all of Fohr’s work, which is usually rooted within the deepest crevasses of the human situation. Her 2017 album, Reaching for Indigo, was borne out of a non secular awakening that left her “convulsing and vomiting.” Her earlier file, -io, was impressed by a grief-filled inventive retreat. Even Fohr’s extra playful facet undertaking, Jackie Lynn, couches character research in elaborate function play.
Fohr’s newest file as Circuit des Yeux, Halo on the Inside, is much less particular in its origins, gesturing as a substitute at a less complicated terror: change. She wrote the album alone, underneath the blanket of evening. It’s a lonely file about indiscernible metamorphosis, drawing on a extra closely digital palette than ever earlier than. It’s Circuit des Yeux by the use of industrial dance music: sludgy, colossal, and teeming with darkness.
From the primary few seconds of opener “Megaloner,” Halo on the Inside is instantly much less involved with Fohr’s guitar and the orchestral preparations highlighted on -io. As an alternative, consideration is cut up between her haunting voice and a slew of synthesizers, all match for a sweaty, cement-walled basement. The percussion, which spans knuckles, storm drums, and drum machines, is deep and loud, rattling headphones and continuously thumping above the combination. It bores its means into your head, alchemizing from the within out.
Halo on the Inside additionally, refreshingly, speaks to the pop music of the previous. “Organ Mattress” encompasses a sly saxophone solo and a jungle of propulsive texture that, at occasions, feels like a extra anxious and gothic model of Peter Gabriel’s “Mercy Road.” The dungeon-core “Cover of Eden” might match on any ’90s Depeche Mode file, with Fohr’s operatic wails echoing behind a pulsing techno wub. It’s Circuit des Yeux’s personal wall of sound, girded by a mixture of emotion and grandeur.
Invoking the pop sounds of yore leads to a few of Fohr’s most accessible work but. “I could make a radio break,” she repeats on “Cover of Eden,” a phrase that serves as a double entendre: each a placing second of self-awareness and an allusion to the music destroying its vessel. Very similar to the metamorphosis she sings about, the album shifts to extra maximalist fare, switching the discordant orchestra for swelling electro-cacophony. And despite the fact that it won’t hit the terrestrial airwaves, it will go gangbusters on the blood rave in Blade.
Fohr’s lyrics typically perform much less as songs and extra as poems, renderings of tragic transformations and emotional crossroads. From a much less assured artist, her writing would possibly sound trite, however vocal experimentation is Fohr’s power. The malleable and arresting supply on the album’s core pushes the music ahead, typically reinventing itself mid-song. “Reality is simply creativeness of the thoughts,” she repeats on “Reality,” spinning that straightforward phrase into layered webs by surrounding it with amorphous incantations. The file’s sixth observe, “Cathexis,” is actually Fohr’s model of “Waking the Witch” by Kate Bush, the place whispers swirl round like blustering cliffside winds.
By the tip of the file, the horror turns into all-consuming. Fohr’s songwriting has at all times contained touches of darkness, however that is the primary time the shadows have been so alien. As Halo on the Inside gestures at eldritch change, it neither soothes nor exhibits the sunshine. It as a substitute turns into an enveloping cocoon of helplessness, with solely Fohr’s voice chopping by to function a information.
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