Circuit Des Yeux (US) feat. Kaleidoscope String Quartet

Big enough to hold the world

After performing at the Saint Ghetto Festival in 2018, Haley Fohr (aka Circuit Des Yeux) returns to Dampfzentrale with her latest album «-io», accompanied by the Kaleidoscope String Quartet.

Fohr, a celebrated figure of the Chicago experimental music scene, has become an international sensation in the world of underground music through her solo project Circuit Des Yeux. Known for her exceptional baritone voice and transportive moods, her dark-tinged songs move between dramatic singer/songwriter folk, psychedelic art pop and melancholic electronica.

It is now four years since the release of «Reaching For Indigo», the fifth and so far last LP by Circuit Des Yeux. The reason for this silence was a creative block brought on by the loss of a close friend and heartache. She found her way back to her art during an artist’s residency in Florida when she turned to the organ and away from her guitar. The original aim of the residency was to explore the hard work of joy after wallowing in grief for so long. «-io» the name of the album describes a world in the world which Fohr began to cultivate – a place where everything is ending all the time. Just like a black hole, a thematic element to which her lyrics keep returning.

Working at home on her computer, Fohr wrote, arranged, and produced each note of «-io». She wrote for a 23-piece orchestra and staged «-io» on a scale vaster than anything she had ever recorded before, a scale that matched the enormity she had weathered, big enough to hold the world in its tumult. The grief and the pain expand and become something you can traverse.

Holding what is not there

As support we present one of only few European shows of an unpronounceable project from the south-eastern United States: —__–__, consisting of Mari Maurice (known solo as More Eaze) and Seth Graham.

Mari’s effect-laden vocals float above a minimal electronic soundscape, disrupted by live woodwind and string sounds. In terms of mood, the debut album «The Heart Pumps Kool-Aid» released last year lies somewhere between «Tilt» by Scott Walker and «Blemish» by David Sylvian. The latter also announced via Twitter that this record was simply «the future of music». The magazine Pitchfork describes their music as follows: «The music’s frequent rests and lacunae lend its jazz-tinged electroacoustic mesh a stony, severe quality. What’s not there holds impossible weight. This music is not so much about emptiness as it is about the point at which emptiness becomes substance.»