Hot Press Track of the Day: Hilary Woods' 'Inhaler'

After the release of two critically acclaimed EPs, Woods spent 2017 writing and recording songs on an eight-track in an abandoned flat she was living in at the time.

Layering piano, synth, tape machine, field recordings, vocals, drone, unadorned beats, and old string instruments, these songs culminate in her debut solo LP Colt. Straddling the acoustic and electronic worlds, Colt is an intensely personal journey through grief, abandonment, and mutating love.

Woods navigates this journey with a lyrical potency that cuts through stark piano, sensuous synth work, and textural acoustics. Somewhere between Marissa Nadler, Grouper and Julee Cruise, these songs evoke both the anguish of their content and the ecstasy of their craft.

“Colt was created as a way to process and make sense of the everyday,” the artist says. “As a means to speak with inner voices, explore aloneness, and understand the complexities of desire. As a vehicle for imaginative flight, as a quest for resilience and connectivity to the outside world, as a medium through which to journey into the present, to temper the mind and inhabit the body.”

Speaking about the first track from the album, Woods said that it was "A response to a relenting absence that was constantly present, Inhaler is a song about homesickness, longing; an attempt to find new ways of being in the wake of separation. I directed the video and worked with friends: cinematographer and long-time collaborator Joshua Wright, and dancer/ choreographer Justine Cooper."

Listen to 'Inhaler' below, and find out more about Hilary Woods here.