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,” she wrote of the track, which morphs between orchestral grandeur and shuddering electronic percussion. Fohr called it, “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.
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).
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.