Phantom Forest

On 'Phantom Forest' Lydia Ainsworth introduces a lush, complex dream world that she created and inhabits largely on her own. It's a beautiful, vast collection of art pop with hooks about the search for personal connections in the midst of apocalypse and technology. It's a journey that holds up to close listening (and lyric reading) and to dance floors, but can also exist on a purely emotional plane. In all cases, it asks that you listen, and take some kind of action. Lydia notes that although the self-produced album is considered pop, she approached it as an orchestrator. "Even if I'm dealing purely with synths," she says, "The songs are like a score, each one an evolving journey. I love to use strings so I've included my own arrangements on 'Tell Me I Exist' and 'Can You Find Her Place.' I recorded live musicians on drums, bass, and guitar on 'Edge of the Throne,' 'The Time,' and 'Floating Dream,' and wove those live elements into my programmed elements.". Ainsworth produced Phantom Forest herself, and wrote all the songs with the exception of the closing track "Green Is The Color," a Pink Floyd cover, and "The Time" and "Give It Back To You," which she co-wrote with Kyle Dixon of Survive (Stranger Things).

The ever-ambitious Toronto composer tackles big themes on her environmentally minded song cycle, but keeps things refreshingly immediate and small-scale.

Phantom Forest continues where Lydia Ainsworth left off with her full-length debut two years ago. Darling of the Afterglow was a symphony of...