{"title":"Skullcrusher","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"skullcrusher-quiet-the-room","title":"Quiet the Room","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHelen Ballentine’s spellbinding first full-length album Quiet the Room is the sound of a window opening, a barrier dissolving. Across these fourteen tracks, the outside world seeps in and the inside world crawls out. The result is a stunning and quietly moving work that reflects the journeys we take through the physical and spiritual realms of ourselves in order to show up for the world.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhile writing the album in the summer of 2021, Ballentine drew inspiration from her childhood home in Mount Vernon, NY. What she set out to capture on Quiet the Room was not the innocence of childhood, as it is so often portrayed, but the intense complexity of it. Past and present merge Escher-like in this dreamlike space laced with elements of fantasy, magic, and mystery. Musically, this translates into a sound that feels somehow weighty and ephemeral all at once, like a time lapse of copper corroding.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTo capture the effortless blend of electronic, ambient, folk, and rock, Ballentine and her collaborator Noah Weinman brought in producer Andrew Sarlo to record at Chicken Shack studio in Upstate New York, close to where Ballentine grew up. “We wanted every song to have that little twinkle, but also a sense of crumbling,” she says. These songs thrum with moments of anxiety that boil over into moments of peace, as on lead single “Whatever Fits Together,” which chugs to a ragged start before the gears catch and ease. On “It’s Like a Secret,” Ballentine struggles to connect and let people in, recognizing that no one can ever fully know our inner worlds and that to understand each other is to cross a barrier and leave a part of ourselves behind. And yet, on closing track “You are my House,” she finds a way to reach out. “You are the walls and floors of my room,” she sings in perfect, hopeful harmony.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAs the album cover invites, these are dollhouse songs to which we bend a giant eye, peering into the laminate, luminous world that Ballentine has created. Like a kid constructing a shelter in a patch of sharp brambles, she reminds us that beauty and terror can exist in the same place. The complexities of childhood are so often overlooked, but through these private yet generous songs, she gives new weight to our earliest memories, widening the frame for us—even opening a window\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Skullcrusher","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":44536200495267,"sku":"SC410cd","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"LP Gatefold Black Vinyl LP","offer_id":44536200528035,"sku":"SC410lp","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"LP Pink Glass Translucent Vinyl","offer_id":44536200560803,"sku":"SC410lp-C2","price":25.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Tea Towel","offer_id":44536207802531,"sku":"SC410-TOWEL-01","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0651\/6703\/2483\/files\/sc410.skullcrusher.quiet.lp.pinkglass.jpg?v=1755188935"},{"product_id":"skullcrusher-skullcrusher","title":"Skullcrusher","description":"\u003cp\u003e'Skullcrusher' is, by all accounts, an exploration of the ways you become yourself when you aren’t looking – and how that feels once you start paying attention. It’s a quiet power; a hushed celebration of the tiny, understated subtleties that culminate into knowing yourself. On her debut EP, songwriter Helen Ballentine offers an airy, intense, and unflinchingly open collection of songs written about – and from – one of life’s in-between gray areas, a stretch of uncertainty and unemployment, and the subsequent search for identity. Here, as Skullcrusher, Ballentine grapples with how to communicate her private self to an audience.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe four dark, dreamy songs on her debut EP were influenced by a strange-but-fitting amalgamation of media consumed in the immediate aftermath of quitting her 9-5. There’s 'Valerie and her Week of Wonders,' the Czech new-wave film that went on to inform Skullcrusher’s aesthetic. There’s Ballentine’s love of fantasy and surrealism, her appreciation of the way fantasy novels juxtapose beauty and violence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the opening “Places\/Plans,” Ballentine sighs, “Come in, the window's open and I'm lying alone,” which feels fitting for the entirety of the EP – Ballentine invites the listener into the depths her personal, intense solitude. “I put so much emphasis on this private self, and all of these things that I love that are my own, and as soon as I let someone else into that, it’s really hard,” Ballentine says. “But I’m also someone who wants to let someone else into that. It’s sort of this back-and-forth about wanting to connect to other people but also being a little bit afraid of that.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe EP’s understated energy radiates with the atmosphere of waking up to the quiet terror of shapeless, structureless days, but it finds power in eschewing the pressures of careerism and a vapid culture of productivity. Instead, as Skullcrusher, Ballentine has the audacity to be comfortable enough with herself, and to simply accept the unknown as her life.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Skullcrusher","offers":[{"title":"12\" Cloudy Clear Vinyl","offer_id":44673921482915,"sku":"SC408lp-C1","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"12\" Picture Disc Vinyl","offer_id":44673921515683,"sku":"SC408pic","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0651\/6703\/2483\/files\/sc408.skullcrusher.lp.mock.final.cloudyclear.jpg?v=1776688866"},{"product_id":"skullcrusher-t-shirt","title":"Skullcrusher T-Shirt","description":"\u003cp\u003e'Skullcrusher' is, by all accounts, an exploration of the ways you become yourself when you aren’t looking – and how that feels once you start paying attention. It’s a quiet power; a hushed celebration of the tiny, understated subtleties that culminate into knowing yourself. 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