Eve Maret – Stars Aligned LP

Stars Aligned is a collaborative release between Whited Sepulchre Records and PRAH Records (UK). All UK and EU customers please place your order through PRAH (you will save a ton on shipping): prahrecordings.bandcamp.com

The title of her stunning new album Stars Aligned is apt; it’s a record that for many will act as an introduction to Maret’s work, but for the artist herself it’s the most crystallized version yet of the world of sound she seeks to operate within – “my spiritual yearning made manifest”, as she puts it.

The Nashville-based artist has been relatively prolific over the past couple of years. There are two previously released albums: a collation of three years of sandbox-like explorations on debut Say So, and the more beat-driven synth pop follow up No More Running. She was also included on the Centripetal Force label’s compilation My Body Tis of Thee for pro-choice charity NARAL, alongside the likes of Marisa Anderson and Moon Duo’s Vive le Void. Last year she released OFO – a winding 15-minute long track addressing her own obsessive and compulsive behavior – and has played shows with Xiu Xiu, Sun Araw and Lydia Lunch, among others. In May 2018, meanwhile, she co-founded Hyasynth House, an electronic music collective and education centre in Nashville for female, trans, and non-binary artists.

On various levels of consciousness, Stars Aligned is a pop-edged modular sprawl that encompasses these past experiences and processes, allied with her own personal emotional and spiritual growth. “It’s about the truth that is revealed by one’s suffering, seeing it as an opportunity for compassion and growth, and focusing on what you want to manifest in the present moment” she says. “My personal experience of grief, love, disappointment, joy, and heartbreak made this album what it is.”

Stars Aligned is a record that twists and turns, moving seamlessly from the excitable skittering four to the floor and manipulated vocals of Synthesizer Hearts to more scrambled amalgamations that gradually reveal themselves – as on the title track’s burbling frequencies. It’s reflective of the real-life flux that Maret herself existed in; these first two tracks came to her while she was spending time out in a camper van in the Tennessee countryside.