Helen Ganya recently announced her new album polish the machine released 18th November via Bella Union and available to preorder here. Today, we are dead chuffed to be debuting the visual for ‘young girls never die’, Ganya’s vocals pirouetting artfully and mysteriously through this buzzing beat and hammering synths. Whipping up into a crescendo, invested with brooding intent, as an aggrieved Ganya delivers a biting declaration towards the patriarchal norms of today: “Young girls never die, we just rot inside.” “The individual girl is often not allowed to grow,” she explains. “Instead there’s this sort of festering.”
The recent video for the lead single ‘afterparty’ features professional dancers Gemma Shrub and Natasha Margerison.Choreographed by Ceyda Tanc who mixes contemporary dance works with influences from Turkish folk culture. Ceyda was given free rein to interpret the music, resulting in a mix of graceful and jarring movements which complement the moods of the song. Watch the video here.
On her new album polish the machine, the Brighton-based songwriter stretches away from the suburban nightmare, seeking a cathartic reprieve that looks beyond the ordinary. “I was looking to the truth of removing any expectations that we’ve acquired along the way,” she says.
Previously performing under the moniker Dog in the Snow, Ganya’s 2017 album Consume Me (Battle Worldwide) introduced a meticulous and elegant voice, while 2019 album Vanishing Lands (Bella Union) – inspired by the striking imagery in a period of vivid dreams – utilised swirling dream-pop and haunting post-punk to present an eerie, unflinching look at the often nightmarish reality of the present world. polish the machine leans further into Ganya’s interiority, but refuses to succumb to despondency, instead pursuing a platform for community and tentative optimism. Here, the constraints of societal roles are loosened to encourage a different route: a wandering, ever-evolving path. “I’ve always slightly feared the ordinary,” Ganya explains. “It never really represented how I feel and how many people feel.”
This sentiment introduces the album, as Ganya utters “I had a fear of the ordinary” on the glistening electro-pop opener “I will hold that hand for you.” Inspired by sculptor Harriet Hosmer and her piece Clasped Hands of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ganya strives for community in an ever-isolated existence. “What we aspire to is to have human connection,” she explains. “I was drawn to this idea of setting the truth of something before it collapses. Setting this connection in stone.”
Later, the album’s title track delves deeper into the idea of lost autonomy, as all-encompassing, repetitive melodies mimic the hands of a puppeteer. The track features a looping bass line, fed through a Roland MC-202, that was created after the bass became stuck. Rather than trying to fix it, Ganya and her co-producer Rob Flynn decided to lean into the mistake. “It’s this idea of not being precious and counteracting the puppetry of what we’re supposed to be doing with our lives” she says.
polish the machine artwork by Eva Bowan and LP tracklist below:
1. i will hold that hand for you
2. young girls never die
3. wedding in the night time
4. delicate graffiti
5. afterparty
6. the crowd
7. deep sea
8. devotion
9. polish the machine
10. blue fruit
11. birdsong
(photo credit: Nicole Ngai)
