Listen: Lydia Ainsworth - "PSI"

22 July 2014, 18:00 | Written by Melanie Battolla

(Tracks)

(Lydia Ainsworth)

Setting out to release her debut album, composer, producer and singer Lydia Ainsworth can look back and see that since 2011 she has been on an incredibly productive roll. From performing with a mini orchestra, to creating the soundtrack to a film (and all the songwriting production in between), Ainsworth’s creative outbursts have mixed and influenced each other, resulting in the work that appears on her debut record.

“PSI” exemplifies this cross contamination of influences. Not only it is orchestral in grandeur, but it is also cinematographic; a composition made of spacious atmosphere and incommensurable breadth. Woozing electronic samples and synths make up for most of the instrumentation, which bounce around with string-like affectations and harp-like incantations.

Ainsworth’s own witching vocals have the entrancing quality of a young Kate Bush but also the coolness of many a Nordic female vocalist (she’s in fact from Canada). Delivering pastoral imagery and astrological and mathematical alignments through her echoing voice as metaphors of a kinship, Ainsworth delivers an incredible teaser to her album.

Right From Real is out on 29 September via Arbutus Records (pre-order here).