Last fall, when Circuit des Yeux (aka CdY, aka Haley Fohr) released the stand-alone single ‘God Dick’, she described the song as a passage leading from the past toward things to come. “It served a chrysalis function,” wrote Fohr. “A love banshee bursting through porcelain skin one hair at a time until, finally, the beast within is fully on display.” Out March 14th, Halo on the Inside is the product of that metamorphosis. It is the butterfly and the beast – a rhapsodic, hedonistic, dance floor-adjacent, pagan-friendly, horns-adorning wall of sound and emotion. Halo on the Inside finds CdY renewed, recombinant, and thrillingly alien.
Today, you can hear the new song ‘Megaloner’. With its pulsing electro-infused synths, the song offers an opening jolt of dark and expansive pop. “‘Megaloner’ is an anthem for the place that exists after an action and inside its consequence,” says Fohr. “Prices are being paid and hope is our currency. I’m singing about endurance, faith, agency, and the singular, unbelievable path toward one’s own fate”. Watch/listen HERE.
Circuit des Yeux is on tour now and will visit Europe, Australia, and the US supporting Alan Sparhawk. In April, Fohr will launch a run of full-band dates, including a London show at the ICA on May 14. Find a complete itinerary below.
A Chicago based musician, composer, and multidisciplinary artist, Fohr’s work defies easy categorization. It has encompassed critically acclaimed albums, free-form improvisation, painting, audio visual installations, and large ensemble compositions. She has performed in an anechoic chamber (a room with no echo), written for a 50-piece children’s choir, and plunged from a rooftop (under the supervision of a stunt-coordinator).
Bringing Halo to fruition involved numerous changes in Fohr’s typical methods of operation. She worked at night. Throughout the writing, Fohr was living alone, slipping down to her basement studio from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. to free her mind, her voice, her hands. These late hours should not be understood as grim and isolative, though. It was a quiet space for uninhibited exploration. She turned herself loose on unfamiliar tools, winding her way through pedals and synthesizers, finding “play and melody through software malfunction and feedback.”
These graveyard shift writing sessions resulted in a revelation for the musician. “I found a very surprising, small voice in me, and it was deep, deep behind my heart,” Fohr says. She discovered it in the solitary quiet of her studio space, with the city outside hushed enough for Fohr to hear the rhythms of her organs in sync with one another—her own inner symphony. She continued working around that concept for eight more months, carving Halo on the Inside out of her reinvigorated relationships with solitude and herself. And then she looked outward.
A trip to Greece ignited in Fohr an interest in the character of Pan, the mythological, flute playing half-goat, half-man. His story of transformation, melody, fertility, and eventual demise served as a moodboard to the album's rapturous, brightly burning moments. You can hear it in “Anthem Of Me,” as sci-fi pads, bit-crushed distortions, and cavernous kick drums dissolve into twinkling piano drops while Fohr’s siren-like voice calls: “It’s an anthem of me. It will rock you.”
The process was adjourned in a trip to Minneapolis to complete the record with producer Andrew Broder (Bon Iver, Moor Mother, Lambchop). The album’s centrepiece, Cathexis, puts the pair’s creative chemistry on full display. Haley’s seemingly limitless voice interplays with Broder’s cathartic guitar coda, offering perhaps the album’s most ascendant moment.
The center of Halo remains Fohr’s voice. It is a powerful, seemingly supernatural instrument — a four-octave span that can span gentle melodic hooks, animalistic bleats, and elemental wails. Here, Fohr makes use of its full range in maximalist compositions that swerve fearlessly between genres and styles. “Through the process of making this music I was able to rewind myself to a time before fear,” she says. “And in the absence of fear I found the intimate beat of sex, love, and melody”.
There’s shock in metamorphosis, Halo On The Inside tells us, but there’s also levity and beauty. A moment of seclusion and dislocation yielding to rebirth and ominous beauty.
HALO ON THE INSIDE TRACK LIST
1. Megaloner
2. Canopy of Eden
3. Skeleton Key
4. Anthem of Me
5. Cosmic Joke
6. Cathexis
7. Truth
8. Organ Bed
9. It Takes My Pain Away
Supporting Alan Sparhawk:
Jan 22 - San Diego, CA @ The Casbah
Jan 24 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
Jan 25 - Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater
Feb 13 - Sydney, AUS @ Oxford Art Factory #
Feb 14 - Brisbane, AUS @ Crobar w/ Alan Sparhawk and Come #
Feb 15 - Melbourne, AUS @ Northcote Social Club #
Feb 21 - Zurich, CH - Bogen F
Feb 22 - Geneva, CH - Antigel Festival
Feb 24 - Munich, DE - Ampere
Feb 25 - Berlin, DE - Lido
Feb 27 - Paris, FR - Petit Bain
Feb 28 - Antwerp, BE - Trix Club
March 2 - Nijmegen, NL - Doornroosje
March 3 - Amsterdam, NL - Paradiso - Tolhuistuin
March 5 - Brighton, UK - Chalk
March 6 - Bristol, UK - Lantern Hall
March 7 - Manchester, UK - Band on the Wall
March 8 - Glasgow, UK - Room 2
March 26 - Bloomington, IN - The Bishop
March 29 - Atlanta, GA - The Earl
March 31 - Carrboro, NC - Cat's Cradle Back Room
April 3 - Boston, MA - Sinclair
April 4 - Hamden, CT - Space Ballroom
April 7 - Toronto, ON - Horseshoe Tavern
April 8 - Detroit, MI - Loving Touch
# w/ Alan Sparhawk, Come
Circuit des Yeux Full Band
April 15 - Minneapolis, MN @ The Cedar %
April 16 - Milwaukee, WI @ Sugar Maple %
April 17 - Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall ^
April 18 - Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom & Tavern %
April 19 - Brooklyn, NY @ Public Records %
April 20 - Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s %
April 22 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Spirit Lounge %
April 26 - Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon %
April 27 - San Francisco, CA @ The Chapel %
April 30 - Portland, OR @ Holocene %
May 1 - Seattle, WA @ Sunset %
May 7 - Utrecht, NL @ EKKO
May 8 - Berlin, DE @ Kantine am Berghain
May 10 - Krems, AT @ donaufestival
May 12 - Paris, FR @ Point Ephemere
May 14 - London, UK @ ICA
May 15 - Brussels, BE @ AB Club
% w/ LEYA
^ w/ Facts