Please note this is a pre-order item due for release 5th September 2025

Tracklist:

1. Diamonds Cutting Diamonds
2. Tell Me I Exist
3. Can You Find Her Place
4. Edge of the Throne
5. Kiss the Future
6. The Time
7. Give It Back to You
8. Floating Dream
9. Green Is the Colour

The album introduced a lush, complex dream world that the singer, composer, and producer created and inhabited largely on her own. She produced all the songs, and wrote and performed everything on the self-released collection outside of a re-imagined cover of Pink Floyds Green is the Colour and 2 other tracks (The Time, Give It Back To You), which started as instrumentals written by Survives Kyle Dixon (who composed the Stranger Things soundtrack with his bandmate Michael Stein), to which Ainsworth wrote melodies and added lyrics. Ainsworth, whos relocated to Los Angeles from Toronto since 2017s Darling of the Afterglow, explains that the collection revealed itself to her as a play taking place in Mother Natures vanishing home, aka Phantom Forest, and that shes singing from 3 perspectives: herself, Mother Nature, and Greek Chorus. For instance, of the albums opener, Diamonds Cutting Diamonds, she explains: The Greek Chorus sets the scene, narrating and offering direction on how to enter Phantom Forest. Its my hope that the listener will imagine the narration to be directed to them as well, as they begin the journey of the album. Youll get a sense of this from the collections edenic cover art and the playful, pastoral video for the albums first single, Can You Find Her Place. Its inspiration came from Ainsworths love for Italian Renaissance painter Botticellis 15-century masterpiece Primavera, an allegorical representation of the burgeoning fertility of the earth in spring. She notes: The video features the Greek gods of the painting in a choreographed Baroque style dance. Keeping with the personal feel of the collection, her sister Abby Ainsworth directed the clip. In line with the classical and historical depths of Phantom Forest, Ainsworth, who holds a Masters Degree in film scoring composition from NYU and studied composition as an undergrad at McGill, notes that although the album might be considered pop, she approached it as an orchestrator. Even if Im dealing purely with synths, she says, The songs are like a score, each one an evolving journey. I love to use strings so Ive included my string arrangements on Tell Me I Exist and Can You Find Her Place. I recorded live musicians on drums, bass, and guitar on Edge of the Throne, The Time, and Floating Dream, and wove those live elements into my programmed elements. Phantom Forest is a beautiful, vast collection that mixes the historical and the hands on, with hooks about the apocalypse and people obsessively using face-recognition software to see what paintings their face match with, in search of some kind of connection. Its a journey that holds up to close listening (and lyric reading) and to dance floors, but that can also exist on a purely emotional plane. In all cases, it asks that you listen, and take some kind of action.