ALBUM NEWS: Wyldest - 'Monthly Friend'

Another new artist for me today (if I do say so myself, really loving how much this is happening of late... discovering so much and loving sharing it here!) Wyldest has announced her second album Monthly Friend, releasing via Hand in Hive on 28th May. Wyldest, AKA Zoe Mead released a reimagined version of her 2019 debut record Dream Chaos, titled Redream Chaos, last year - a completely new version of the record featuring fragments of the original recordings blended with field recordings and demos. I'm yet to listen in full but I'm really keen to explore, and I'm loving brand new track Hollow, Zoe's self-defined 'empowerment song'. Recent single Wilting is ace too. 

Written, mixed and produced by Zoe herself, the forthcoming album documents her empowerment as a self-sufficient artist and a woman overcoming gender stereotypes and gender constraints. The title of the record itself refers to something which society harmfully teaches us from a young age to be ashamed of, to hide and to fear, but which she now sees as a blessing.

On the new track, Wyldest writes: "Society and corrupt governments are helpless to the strength of what we collectively will become. I like to think that we're all just sowing the seeds of what's to come and it's a pretty unstoppable thing. I wrote this song about change, something that I believe is the only way the human race can continue to exist, so I'm celebrating it, believing that it's happening." 

I'll try and post more on the record closer to the time but I am LOVING this quote from Wyldest and needed to share. 

"Throughout the album, I visit these feelings through metaphors, largely related to nature. I always found it really ironic that women commonly get compared to fruit. Peaches for example get over-ripe and people throw them away, discard them, when in fact they are probably at their most delicious and nutritious. A lot of the time, women are unfortunately subject to a similar fate. When they are young, they are sexualised and therefore their actual intellectual and creative worth can be overlooked. As they age, they get disregarded almost completely, and for what? Because they aren't as useful to men anymore? Perhaps. But why does our ability to reproduce have to dictate our worth? It doesn't and it shouldn't." 

Pre-order/pre-save Monthly Friend here.

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