Alana Yorke Shares New Single From UpcomingAlbum, Destroyer Out May 17
Alana Yorke returns with another single, “All The Flowers” today, as a further preview to the upcoming May 17 release of her new full-length album, Destroyer. Alana recently announced, Destroyer the meticulous, multi-year effort, completed following Alana’s heroic survival of a stroke in 2022, and at its core, is an art-pop stunner that represents both a creative triumph and a personal transformation. “All The Flowers” features the accompaniment and backing from the Dream Magic Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser.
“All the Flowers is about grief and loss,”says Alana.“The song began as very personal grief and loss, related to experiences of depression and PTSD. The need to express or materialize those feelings so that they could perhaps be understood by others led to the image of “all the flowers in the world floating on the ocean” which I just found so devastatingly beautiful. While writing this song, David Bowie left this earth, and that very public, shared grief became another dimension to the songwriting experience and helped me to re-enter the intensity of feeling to complete the song. When we produced this song, I had a clear vision for the rhythmic part of the choruses (and pre-choruses) being slightly abrasive and in-your-face to counter the beauty of the song and give it a more intense, uncomfortable dimension.”
One morning in November 2022, Alana realized she was unable to move her left arm. A few days (and numerous hospital tests) later, she discovered she’d had a hemorrhagic stroke that affected the right hemisphere of her brain (associated with creative expression) in the parietal lobe (responsible for receiving and filtering sensory input), she also lost the use and ability to move the left side of her body.
From its genesis that initially began in 2016, Destroyer was anchored in the idea of a solitary descent to face the self and come back wholly changed. The universe of Destroyer, created in collaboration with husband and co-producer Ian Bent, is an otherworld where snapshots of Yorke’s psychic landscape are fanned out against a layered musical backdrop coloured by a 21-piece string orchestra, the ultraviolet cool of ’80’s synth-pop, the austere grace and rhythmic cadences of minimalist contemporary composers and the whole-hearted reverberation of anthems that call forth echoes from the unconscious, somewhere between the tidal forces of Kate Bush and Philip Glass. Toward the end of the gargantuan multi-year effort of making the album, Yorke’s survival of a stroke led to unparalleled experiences of existence, and an extraordinary journey of recovery. Now as she rises above the surface, Destroyer has become an offering from the depths, intended to transform emotions from her singular experience into a gift of universal resonance.
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