12 hours ago
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“Exhale is about noticing the moment when a song is first conceived. There is a part of me that wants to stop there and leave the song unfinished, before structure settles in and the song evolves. Instead, I allow it to form & accept whatever it may become,” shares Helen Ballentine.
“This process feels natural, like taking a pause at the top of your inhale before letting it all out. Maybe through acknowledging this process I can feel more at peace with change in general. When thoughts, words & sounds interact in a certain way they can reveal a path forward. Sometimes I want to linger before this path, in a space that feels hidden and safe, but in the end I take the path & surrender to change.”
Ballentine began writing Circle after leaving Los Angeles, a city she’d called home for nearly a decade. She ended up returning upstate to New York’s Hudson Valley, where she was born and raised. Several years of intense isolation followed, and Ballentine immersed herself in films, books, and art that reflected the rupture of relocating cross-country and its dissociative aftershocks. The forthcoming release follows her 2022 debut, Quiet the Room.
"I like thinking about my work as a collection, and every time I add more to it, I’m adding a rock," Ballentine says. "Eventually it might form a circle. Each time I make something, I’m putting another line around the body of work. It feels like I’ll be trying to trace it for my whole life."
Tracklist:
- March
- Dragon
- Living
- Maelstrom
- Changes
- Periphery
- Red Car
- Exhale
- Vessel
- The Emptying
English (US) · 