Following up a string of releases on labels such as Mana, Sun Ark, Orange Milk Records and Abyss, Other People now present the new album Fobia by Argentinian musician and sound artist aylu, real name Ailin Grad. Inspired in part of Grad's many collaborative projects over the last few years, Fobia sees her collecting and rearranging the music and sounds fostered within these to create an intimate, spiritually charged album that turns personal struggle into collective resistance and resilience. What initially started as a way for Grad to process her own experiences with agora- and claustrophobia, and an attempt to navigate feelings of shame and a perceived demand to keep these feelings bottled up and hidden from the world, she began to realize how mental health struggles are not isolated incidents but part of broader systems of collective suffering and injustice. "It took a long time for me to discover that my issues were part of a system that produces these kinds of symptoms and that it takes a lot of courage to find a way around them. I have the feeling that more and more people suffer from these kind of things in some way or another, and what was at first taught as something you should be silent about and keep private, I discovered that the more you talk about it and share it with people you trust, the more you realize that it's part of something much bigger." This tension and constant pull between fear and joy, light and dark, is present throughout the album. From the strained breathing featured in opening track "Yodo" echoing the suffocating feeling from claustrophobia interspersed with the lighter textures of "Obelisco Elysium" and "Prospero" offering up a sense of relief, to the almost cacophonous, immersive soundscapes of "El Sol Mal," mirroring the complex, often contradictory emotions when navigating mental health challenges. Fobia invites listeners to move through pain with honesty, finding strength in shared experiences.
