Q&A: Astoria Creates Scrapbook of Memories Within New Album, BORNE WORLD
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY FAITH LUEVANOS ☆
Photo By Jacob Klein
WITH A PROJECT SEVEN YEARS IN THE MAKING – NYC-based artist and producer Astoria has decided it is time to share her collection of memories with her latest album, BORNE WORLD. Throughout her 20’s, Astoria, AKA Isabelle Ennis, has been ruminating on the concepts of life, death, and rebirth, and has somehow found a way to put her thoughts on these heavy topics into 20 powerful songs.
Even though she’s been releasing music, Ennis has been carefully curating the songs she’s been creating in between to decide which ones would be a perfect fit for the album. She shared, “it felt more like a fate kind of thing, less of something in my control. It was kind of like an internal compass.”
BORNE WORLD invites listeners into the mind of Astoria, with a dreamlike experimental pop soundscape that becomes the soundtrack of exploring themes that many struggle to grasp on their own. Each song has its own story to share, but ultimately, this album is meant to let each listener take what they need for peace and closure on whatever may be occurring in their own lives.
Ennis would like the release of this album to help shine a light on Asheville, NC, a place she called home for eight years, whose community is still trying to rebuild after the destruction of Hurricane Helene. “Asheville is such a special, special place, and it's such a rich place in terms of its artists and the land and the community. It's just really special, and really deserves a lot of help and support.” A donation link is provided here to help the community regain their footing.
Photo By Charlie Boss
LUNA: BORNE WORLD hones in on the topics of life, death, and rebirth. Can you explain further as to how this album does so?
ASTORIA: It’s a collection of songs from over seven years and many different points in my life, and it's kind of a container for holding these different aspects that are pretty cyclical in all of our lives of the inherent death and rebirth and finding new life that just is always occurring. So, some of the songs are just from those different kinds of places or energies. Some are very much me exploring this relationship with time and cycles in itself, some are just me diving into love and a beautiful and deep connection, and others are dealing with the inner death process and then the rebirth that occurs after that.
The songs that were chosen to be on the album are very much connected to my inner development and journey of becoming a woman, because when I had the idea for it a really long time ago, and I didn't really know what it fully meant at the time, it was something that kind of grew along with me. I didn't mean for it to take so long, but it just kind of naturally ended up being these little pieces from different eras of my life.
LUNA: So the length of time before the release wasn’t intentional, it was more so fate that it played out that way?
ASTORIA: Yeah, it was fate. I came up with the name seven years ago. Some of the earliest tracks on there are “SPACE AND TIME”, “THE NEW WORLD”, and “MT. SHEEBA”. I was playing with this idea of creating a world and in between, I released other projects, but I'd write a track here and there where I'd be like, “Oh, that's a BORNE WORLD track.” because it was really touching on this feeling of an internal kind of resolution.
There's a bunch of songs that didn't make the album over the years, and there was a certain point where I was like, “Okay, it's time for this to be done.” It felt more like a fate kind of thing, less of something in my control. It was kind of like an internal compass. I feel like projects definitely have their own consciousness, and you can't really force things. But honestly, I had thought I would finish it way faster than I did. But then there are all these songs that needed to be on the album that were written later that were really quintessential to it. It just kind of had a life of its own.
LUNA: Did the act of writing these songs help you grapple with the topics you mentioned previously? Like a way to help further your understanding and maybe even bring you closure?
ASTORIA: We’re constantly going through little deaths and rebirths, but I've grown up so much in the time that I wrote this. I can really hear it through the songs and the different points in time that things were written. For instance, the closing track, “COME INTO ME,”was written last year. It was one of the later tracks, yet there's so much growth in that song versus a song like “COUVERSETS,” where I'm still really trying to find myself or this place of rebirth. I think some of the songs naturally had wisdom in them that were beyond me. “SPACE AND TIME” was a really early one that I feel still resonates with me so deeply, and I feel like there's a lot of that future self in there, if that makes sense. It's really like a development over time of these different aspects of myself and just trying to move through this world and find some kind of inner peace and answer to the insanity that we're all living in.
LUNA: You have a sound that’s constantly evolving, not only through your entire discography, but of course, throughout the album as well. How did you discover your sound?
ASTORIA: I'm constantly discovering my sound. I would say I've always been really into synthesizers, and I've always been really into sound design and just creating little worlds within sound design. When I started producing and working in Ableton and learning synthesizers, I was really developing that. Over the course of the album, I started collaborating with people for the first time. So much of my process is very internal, I do a lot of the writing and production alone. When I was younger, I was always completely alone, whereas now I am more collaborative.
I feel like I'm always rediscovering and exploring different sounds. Right now I'm actually working on a completely different project that's like a grunge, noise folk thing. It's just guitar and some noise elements, so it's really different. But I also have a DJ project that's house/breakbeat music. There's just a lot of different types of music that I'm into that I like to make.
LUNA: Throughout the course of writing the album, was there an age or specific time period that you reflect on the most? If so, what song holds the memory of that time?
ASTORIA: Honestly, all of them are really strong memories for me, and such different memories. With “SPACE AND TIME,” I remember so clearly writing that, and I'd been living in Asheville for like, six months or something, and I was just playing at open mics. It was a guitar song that I would play, and then started to produce that. I think all of them have very specific memories of what was going on in my life at that time, and where I was at emotionally and spiritually, and my environments shifted so much internally.
With “COME INTO ME,” I actually wrote that right after an acupuncture appointment. It was like this deeply healing experience where I don't know what exactly happened, but it was some sort of somatic healing going on. I left just feeling so raw and vulnerable and like, crying. I was like, “I have to write a song right now.” I was feeling my inner child really deeply, and that's what the song is about. To me, it's like calling myself back in. As soon as I wrote it, I was like, “oh, that's for BORNE WORLD.”
LUNA: Was there a specific song that may have been more challenging to write on a personal level?
ASTORIA: I think a lot of them have had their different challenges in terms of vulnerability, you know, like writing something and being like, “am I going to be this vulnerable here? And share this? And be straightforward about this?” It’s not like I’m the most straightforward either, I'm definitely pretty abstract sometimes, but I think some lines here and there were feelings I felt kind of challenged in their vulnerability and choosing to commit to the vulnerability.
Photo By Jane Sanchez
LUNA: I’m sure it was hard going back into certain headspaces that you might have already moved on from?
ASTORIA: Yeah, yeah. But some of them, I could still relate, but just in a different way. Also, some of the meanings changed for me over time. “BORN IN THE OCEAN” was something I had written, probably like, three years ago, and I always really loved that song. It was written on a harp, and it always felt really precious to me, but I think the way I conceptualized it was being more about myself. And then I had a miscarriage last year, and it was one of the most intense things I'd ever experienced. And then, when I was recording and producing that song, the meaning totally changed and became about this life that I had connected with that passed and the story of that. I feel like that life is in the recording, if that makes sense, but it completely changed the meaning. I feel like sometimes you write songs and you think they're about one thing, but then sometimes they're little prophecies or something, and then you're like, “Oh, this is what it's about.”
LUNA: Who, or what, are some of your biggest inspirations?
ASTORIA: I really love Little Dragon. I really love Rival Consoles. I definitely feel like I'm deeply inspired by the natural world, and elemental forces, like water and earth. There's a lot of that in my lyrics, talking about these kinds of natural elements.
LUNA: What are some goals you have for yourself in the new year? These can either be within music or personal goals.
ASTORIA: With music, I'm working on quite a few other projects right now that I'm excited about, and also my next album. So I've just been writing a lot, and excited to make some shorter projects, because this one was so long and deep. So I'm excited to do some ones that feel maybe more specific in a flavor, and shorter, more bite-sized. I just moved to New York, and that's been incredibly inspiring. I really love it out here, and it's been fun, just diving into all the music here and all the dancing here. I really love to dance. And goal-wise, I would love to do some deep touring next year.
