Folkadelphia Session: Circuit Des Yeux

Photo by Julia Dratel, courtesy of the musician.
Circuit Des Yeux‘s Haley Fohr worships at the altar of sound. I personally became a convert around Overdue, her release from 2013, but her whole body of work treats sound, all sound – the beautiful, the ugly, the harsh, the serene – as transcendent and worthy of consideration and use. She has faith in what is coaxed out of her instruments, circuitry, and voice, and she leads the audience to keep faith as well, to be led to extraordinary sonic locations.

Last year, she released her Thrill Jockey Records debut In Plain Speech, her most collaborative project to date; she worked with Chicago folks from acts like Cave, Bitchin Bajas, Verma, Little Scream, and Spires That In The Sunset Rise. Now Fohr is not just a solitary supplicant, but a part of an aural congregation. Her deeply powerful voice soars as never before.

Fohr has a new musical outlet, her alter-ego Jackie Lynn, who fully realized, backstory and all, has reached and explored musical terrain that existed outside of the scope of Circuit Des Yeux.

Though In Plain Speech was created in collaboration, Fohr gave those songs the solo and acoustic treatment for our in-studio session, which was recorded with support and resources from Drexel University’s Music Industry program. The passionate prayers are unfiltered and undiminished, though completely mesmerizing to behold.