Joy and sorrow often live closer together than one imagines. There is, after all, no ‘becoming’ in life … without first waving a white flag at events beyond our control.
Across her career, Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter HALIENE has created a language around the contrast between happiness and heavier hearted times, giving voice to the place where the paths of love, loss, hope and transformation cross. Now, with her sophomore album Eclipsed, she draws on those to create her most personal and expansive body of work yet.
Following Heavenly, her 2022 debut album, Eclipsed finds HALIENE stepping both into new stylistic areas, while also reconnecting with the musical worlds that shaped her beginnings. Across its fifteen tracks, the worlds of trance, melodic bass, cinematic electronica and pop songwriting shift in and out of each another’s shadows. At its heart though, Eclipsed is an album about what happens when that light changes.
Lyrically its songs trace loves, both found and lost, and identities once surrendered but now reclaimed. It’s about the people who carry us through our darkest moments, and the unexpected perspectives that can emerge from experiences we’d never have chosen ourselves. Rather than treating darkness as something to simply overcome, Eclipsed explores its relationship with the light: how one gives form and meaning to the other, and how sorrow so often enhances our capacity to experience joy.
“From first to last breath, life is a continual act of yielding to the unknown” observes HALIENE. “I hope in some way these songs become part of your own story and bring some meaning to your life’s troubles and joys alike.”
That duality runs the full course of the album. Recent HALIENE singles have already illustrated different sides of its world. The Ilan Bluestone collaboration Eclipsed By You marked a striking return to HALIENE’s trance bedrock, examining the point at which loving another person so completely can begin to eclipse your own identity. Solar Waves, meanwhile, emerged during a period of physical recovery and creative disconnection, its atypically soft vocal performance transforming limitation into intimacy and ultimately helped HALIENE rediscover the joy of creating.
Cathartically, on Right Love, she returned to the melodic bass sound that has long played a part of her musical DNA. The song explores the particular ache of meeting the right person at the wrong time. Confronting the reality of acceptance that some things, though doubtlessly beautiful and desirable, only arrive to change us – rather than simply remaining forever.
Elsewhere, collaboration becomes another source of its rich expressionism for the album. Don’t Give Up On Me, created with Nikademis, grew from HALIENE’s memories of supporting her parents during their battles with cancer. Its poignant message of borrowed strength and of becoming someone else’s hope when they can no longer carry their own, finds an equally personal connection in Nikademis’ experiences with serious illness.
On Voltage, the ‘PhD to EDC’-journeying Miyuki joins HALIENE for an altogether different kind of awakening. Trance synths, techno energy and 303 drive underscore a song about breaking free from expectation and discovering what we’re truly meant to be – and do.
These previously revealed chapters form only part of Eclipsed. From its opening title overture, through My Reverie, The Other Side, her Koven collaboration Orbit, Heaven Left A Light On, House of Daydreams, Dark Side of My Heart, Found and The Hymn, the album continually returns to its central theme of illumination and shadow, before reaching its final moment: Totality.
In a musical landscape increasingly shaped by AI and repetitive chart formulas, it is refreshing to hear an electronic artist determined to push boundaries both musically and sonically. On Eclipsed, HALIENE resists predictability at every turn, weaving together unexpected genres, shifting time signatures, unconventional modes, and intricate harmonic ideas. From the collision of dubstep and drum & bass with Picardy-third progressions in “The Other Side,” to the 15/4 odd meters and pentuplet polyrhythms of “Dark Side of My Heart,” the album consistently reaches beyond the conventions of modern electronic music. “I wanted to push against the trend and make music that AI could never ‘dream of’” HALIENE explains. “Music with enough humanity, complexity, and unexpected choices that it could never have been generated by a formula, and yet it feels seamless, singable and even danceable.”
More than anything, however, Eclipsed is intended to travel beyond its creator. These are songs born from change, devotion, grief, resilience, uncertainty and joy, but their meaning does not end with the experiences that created them. Like an actual eclipse, Eclipsed finds beauty not solely in darkness or light, but in the extraordinary and evanescent moments when the two engage with one another.
‘Eclipsed’, HALIENE’s daring and astonishing second album, is out now. Find it through all good streaming and sales platforms here [haliene.lnk.to/eclipsed]
Tracklist:
01. Eclipsed [Intro]
02. Solar Waves
03. Right Love
04. My Reverie
05. The Other Side
06. Orbit (with Koven)
07. Don’t Give Up On Me (with Nikademis)
08. Heaven Left A Light On
09. House of Daydreams
10. Dark Side of My Heart
11. Found
12. Eclipsed By You (with Ilan Bluestone)
13. Voltage (with Miyuki)
14. The Hymn
15. Totality
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