Elena Tonra, guitarist, vocalist and lyricist of Daughter, has announced details of a solo project.
Running parallel to Daughter, she’s assumed the pseudonym Ex:Re (pronounced ex ray) for her eponymously-titled debut solo album, a deeply personal record that was made with both a sense of urgency and a cathartic need. Just finished, it’s being released with equal speed and will be out digitally on 30th November.
Tonra’s candid solo songs document the time after a relationship ended and are written like unsent letters to herself and others. Taking on a creative moniker, she chose Ex:Re to mean ‘regarding ex’ and also ‘X-Ray’ as a way to look inside and see what is really there. Writing took a year but the recording process lasted mere months, turning to Fabian Prynn (4AD’s in-house engineer and producer) and composer Josephine Stephenson on cello to help bring Ex:Re to life.
Elena said of the album, “Although the record is written for someone, a lot of the time it’s about the space without that person in it. In every scenario, there's either the person in memory or the noticeable absence of that person in the present moment. I suppose it is a break-up record, however I do not talk about the relationship at all, and he hardly features in the scenes. He is only felt as a ghostly presence.”
The first single to be taken from Ex:Re is ‘Romance’. An ambient song for the dancefloor, its accompanying video (directed by Antonia Luxem) is appropriately set in a club, following Tonra lost in motion.

The world is growing ever smaller. There are less places to hide and less space to think. Nothing is private. It's a notion that Belgian quintet Balthazar felt keenly as they traversed the world touring their 2012 album Rats. It was an intense period where they clocked up the sort of hard road mileage that can make or break a band but Balthazar's two songwriters, Maarten Devoldere and Jinte Deprez, emerged emboldened. As Jinte explains, "we know each other's darkest secrets now. We grew together. You live together as each other's brother and sister. We discovered we really like each other."
Lives lived in each other's pockets has left its mark on Thin Walls, the stunning new album from the five-piece who are completed by Patricia Vanneste, Simon Casier and Michiel Balcaen. "Thin Walls is all about touring and never having any privacy," says Jinte. The songs were written in a hazy hyperactive state between shows. Balthazar's previous two albums, 2010's Applause and the calculated, searing alt-rock of 2012's Rats, were created in a slow, considered manner back home. This time round, the band had to fit in writing sessions whenever they had a spare day off. "When you're on tour, the mood is very restless and chaotic," says Maarten. "Life on tour is kind of weird, everything is prepared for you and you drink way too much. If you write with a hangover, then you write differently..."