Keeley Forsyth The Hollow

Keeley Forsyth is a singer, composer and actress from Oldham, UK. A frequent presence on primetime TV since the mid-'90s, over the past few years she has forged an unusual parallel career as a unique and uncompromising new presence in contemporary music. Described by Pitchfork as "arid and beautiful", by Uncut as "astonishing" and The Sunday Times as "one of the most remarkable in years", Keeley's debut LP, Debris (2020) and follow-up, Limbs (2022), drew unanimous critical praise, prompting comparisons with Nico, Beth Gibbons, Aldous Harding, Nick Cave, Anohni and even Scott Walker. The bleak and foreboding landscape surrounding Keeley's North Yorkshire home seems to inhabit her third LP, The Hollow. The moors, visible from her studio window, impact upon a music that feels made of these places: windswept, rain-soaked and blinking through the low-lit landscape. The album's title derives from discovering a long-abandoned mining shaft whilst out walking - the past lurking within and haunting the present we now occupy. Keeley's unique elemental voice again sits centrally within this world-building. Taking aspects of sacred music, minimalist post-classical, dark ambient, film and theatre soundtracks, she layers her vocals into chamber choirs, applies pitch shifts and other digital processing, moves from clear articulate intention to mumbled numb utterances; her cathartic reflections are exorcisms in song.