Chaos Emeralds by Elsa Hewitt

Originally from Lewes, UK, Hewitt discovered songwriting early on, and the power it had to bring meaning and solace. A devotion was sparked that would continue to deepen and transform until the present day. Producing four-track demos from the age of 13 - playing guitar, flute and drum kit, with a natural inclination to invent ad-hoc recording techniques - she progressed through fronting post-punk bands to solo electronic songwriting, keenly developing her ear for aesthetic and passion for album-making along the way.

Tompkins Square released experimental electronic album LUPA in 2021, hailed by UNCUT (“Sonic world-building”) and featured by Rough Trade via their Transmissions series.

https://tompkinssquare.bandcamp.com/album/lupa

Chaos Emeralds is a collection of sparse and dynamic beats, made from canopies of found sounds and vivacious elements that fly around, subsequently layered with melodic poetry that is rich in metaphor for the inner experience.

Most of the vocals on the album were originally poems born out of the intensity of the vulnerable stages of transformation. The themes follow on from those presented in LUPA, effectively continuing to document the story that runs throughout all of Elsa Hewitt’s albums. Unimaginable Pain and Wash The Sea were largely wordless improvisations that once again felt so potent that they had to remain central to the piece. The lyrics for both tracks would later be solidified however the recordings were only applied to Unimaginable Pain. Hewitt worked on the album in 2020 and 2021, before moving up north and subsequently distancing herself from everything including her career, in order to focus on self-healing, recovery, integration and recalibration. She continued working on the album in 2023, adding several new tracks and new elements, finally bringing the creation to a conclusion after integrating all of the ideas that were brought up at the start.

The tracks were made predominantly from synths and spontaneous field recordings of nature, creatures, people and situations, as well as guitar, vocal processing and resampling of her own flute-playing which she hadn’t done since secondary school. The initial recordings that spawned the album were made in and around a shared house in south London, with the majority of tracks being produced in her bedroom studio in the attic of the elegant Georgian building. It was there that she and her housemates would all be locked-down during the pandemic, fortunate enough to have a large, thriving garden, where Hewitt spent a lot of time reflecting, writing and practicing yoga. The creaking rope of a rusty swing became the first sound to be used in Avery Albino, along with the builders working on a roof down the road, whose noises also featured in Citrinitas. People in the street, birds in the trees, a bird that flew into the house, drumming on trees with her boyfriend, fireworks on new year’s eve, a trip to the beach with her mother, the cat that came to live with them, amongst many others were sounds that featured on this album. Chaos Emeralds sees Hewitt further reinforce her style of making unusual time signatures feel so natural that they are barely detectable, as well as creating ambience with vocals and painterly sound-worlds that capture the deep yet abstract feelings of the moment.

The album was conceived at a time when the traffic had slowed almost to a complete stop, and you could hear nature in detail, free from the never-ending chorus of pollution that normally crowds it. The air felt clearer, the sounds felt juicier, the light felt more penetrating. The quietness was very peaceful and the local wildlife appeared to be flourishing. The songs came to embody a primitive stage of awakening, like bright sunlight shining into cluttered spaces where dusty objects of the past were in a state of disintegration. They followed on from the deep, dark winter of LUPA, rising like the spring, fragile but resolute, absorbing, expressing and responding to the world like a baby with heightened senses.

Tompkins Square label, established in 2005, has released acclaimed recordings by artists such as William Tyler, Gwenifer Raymond, Ryley Walker and Michael Chapman as well as reissues of folk, old-timey, gospel and American Primitive Guitar. The label has received 8 Grammy nominations.

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