Feelings was written and produced by Ekin Fil amidst the months of anxious tension that 2020 laid upon us, taking around 1 year to manifest in its final form.

Yet underneath the opaque veneer of swooning drones, timeworn chords and verbal lamentations, glimpses of sanguinity and optimism flicker through the fabric of the work, mirroring the perpetual state of uncertainty and isolation we collectively faced that year, suspended between months of dissolute ambivalence and minute, optimistic spurs.


PRESS:

Following an impressive run of releases for Helen Scarsdale Agency and Students of Decay, Ekin Fil's latest album is an exercise in emotional catharsis. Her soft vocals are the album's anchor, and add a beam of optimistic humanity through the thick fog of doom. On 'Little One', he voice cuts through piano and sounds like a lost Cocteau Twins demo, while on 'Infinite Space', it's almost reduced to a ghostly whisper, struggling to be heard beneath the sound of rain.

The album's most successful moment is the title track, a collaboration with Bulgarian artist Krāllār. Here, Fil's voice is blown out into psychedelic harmonic prisms that swirl through slow-moving frozen soundscapes. The piano is still there, but re-sculpted into warped icicles - it's disarmingly beautiful.

-Boomkat



The experience of listening to Ekin Fil’s stunning new album, Feelings, is like the momentary blindness experienced leaving someplace dark and walking out into the daylight. Everything goes white; a pensive stillness takes over, time becomes momentarily infinite. Feelings is stuck there, rife with anxiety and longing, but also grounded with a stoic determination to not shield our eyes from the blaze.

Ekin Fil has been making beautiful, haunting albums for over a decade now, but the quiet intensity of Feelings is overwhelming. Rain drenches lolling piano chords on the sinuous reflections of “Infinite Space.” Ekin Fil’s voice sits in a spherical chamber circumventing the creeping glow. Clouds obscure the sun, but just barely; echoes escape into the sky and disappear. “Never Seen” treads similar waters, but from the other side. Somber passages begin sinking toward the core, the vocals like a sodden net dragging everything toward the abyss. This push/pull sentiment slinks throughout Feelings.

Throughout Feelings, Ekin Fil’s piano playing is the guidepost. It’s the backbone on pieces like “Little One” and “A Veil,” creating structures that she layers with gauzy ephemera. The languid float of synth flares and vocals encases the firm edges with a steely resolve. “Signals” repeats in slow circles permeated with a winter chill, tiptoeing across the awakening landscape. As her voice flickers over an ocean of stars across a dark blue backdrop, the nightblooms open and sing.

Feelings is a strange, enchanting environment. We’ve all visited places that were unforgettable, even if we never wanted to return or see them again. Constructed in the shattering mire of 2020, Feelings is in that zone, but hearing it head on and dissecting the arcane messages woven throughout are the surest ways out of the fire.

Brad Rose, Foxy Digitalis