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. It's often stated that no one else is making music quite like this.

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. A connection to time that places us within it, facing what is gone and what may come. But also, perhaps that time has no concern as to whether we're here or not.

Keeley's unique elemental voice again sits centrally within this world-building. Her cathartic reflections are exorcisms in song. We hear an artist making sense of her life, willing to expose vulnerability without ever appearing weak. Working again with producer Ross Downes, the LP features Matthew Bourne and Colin Stetson, Forsyth sought to expand both her voice and music. 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.

Composer Mihály Vig's score to Bela Tarr’s film 'The Turin Horse' is reimagined as a pressurised outpouring, recasting the everyday within a mythical light of survival and hope. On ‘A Shift’, Mal Finch's protest song ‘We Are Women, We Are Strong ‘, originally sung by wives and daughters in support of the '80s miner’s strikes, is recontextualised in solidarity for an experience of creative labour.

A sought-after collaborator, Keeley is currently working towards new projects with Ben Frost, Teho Teardo, and Matthew Bourne. She has provided vocals for Louis Carnell; remixed both Gazelle Twin and Quin Quis; has soundtracked Maxine Peake’s directorial debut; and is currently developing a stage and studio project with Ben Frost and writer Robert MacFarlane.

A magnetic live performer able to create an immersive almost ritualistic experience, Keeley recently received a standing ovation at Unsound and supports the LP with shows at Bristol New Music, Rewire festival and London's ICA.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. The Answer
2. The Hollow
3. Come And See
4. Eve
5. Turning
6. A Shift
Side B
1. Slush
2. Drag Me Down
3. Do I Breathe
4. In The Corner
5. Horse
6. Creature

Keeley Forsyth’s 2020 debut album found an elemental voice ringing out from beneath the rubble. Understated but devastating, Debris' success led to a transformation as the songs were brought to the stage. An innate performer, Forsyth found herself channelling something she hadn’t yet fully come to understand, and it was here that the voice found on Debris began to probe outwards and discover a physical form. It’s a form that fully takes shape on her second album Limbs.

Anyone who saw Forsyth perform in the brief window after Debris was released and before shows ground to a halt can testify to the show’s power. In pin-drop silence, enraptured audiences watched as Forsyth inhabited a new body. No stranger to portraying characters in her career as an actor, this was something different.

Limbs is a record of reckoning with that change. After the initial purge of Debris, those feelings of trauma and fear remain but there’s also a life to live. “Save me from the chair where sadness lies,” she sings on opener ‘Fires’, wrestling the need to be creative within the routine of daily life. Where Debris was composed and recorded in close proximity to instrumentalist and arranger Matthew Bourne, Limbs deploys a more expansive palette. With Forsyth at the centre, collaborator Ross Downes acts as another limb, remotely producing the pulses and drones which feed back into the voice. Bourne this time is enlisted to “Bring some of the soil of Debris” into Limbs. The result is clearer and more spacious. If Debris sounded like it was buried under the earth - Forsyth’s voice repressed and breathless - Limbs brings some of that live presence. 

TRACK LISTING

1. A1. Fires
2. A2. Bring Me Water
3. A3. Limbs
4. A4. Land Animal
5. B1. Blindfolded
6. B2. Wash
7. B3. Silence
8. B4. I Stand Alone

The songs comprising Keeley Forsyth’s debut, are, she states simply, “like blocks of metal that drop from the sky”. Minimal arrangements place that elemental voice front and centre. Nerves are quietly frayed over its running time; an intimate document of personal change, we’re held in limbo until the final note is left to ring. Debris explores the darker corners of domestic life, balancing the need to create with the responsibilities that come with a family, a partner and a career. Seismic ruptures behind closed doors. “There was a lot going on in my life that was heavy and hard,” she adds. “Songs were made under that moment.”

Born and raised in Oldham in the north-west of England, Forsyth first made her name as an actor. Her enigmatic voice is so indelible even she is sometimes provoked to refer to it as a third person, like the characters she’s inhabited as an actor, this time populating songs sharing tales of the high and low tides, of freedom and entrapment, and of hard-won triumphs. “They’ve been in my mind for a while,” she concludes. “I have sung them to my children, and at home alone, and making this album has been an opportunity for me to discover the voice and being who sings these songs. It has changed me, and will continue to. I recognise my life again.”

With sparse arrangements by pianist and composer Matthew Bourne and producer Sam Hobbs, Keeley Forsyth’s music is centred around a singular, emotionally raw and magnetic vocal delivery

TRACK LISTING

A1. Debris
A2. Black Bull
A3. It’s Raining
A4. Look To Yourself
B1. Lost
B2. Butterfly
B3. Large Oak
B4. Start Again