Alex Henry Foster Shares 'Nocturnal Candescence' Single From New Album 'Kimoyo'
Alex Henry Foster shares the second single “Nocturnal Candescence,” off of upcoming LP Kimiyo, out April 26.
"The song conveys the profound emotions of loss, hopelessness, and personal surrender in the context of self-abandonment. It’s an inner scream designed to reach others when we feel invisible to a world that never stops spinning for anyone’s pain to be seen, to be shared. It’s the resilience of being, of believing in another morning shine. It’s the reminiscence of traditional Japanese songs of longing, “(aishōka)”, defined by mourning, contemplation, and faith in better tomorrows."
Foreseen as a story within a story, Kimiyo bloomed into a multi-layered entity, the album is inspired by the testimonies of the people Foster met in Japan back in 2010. Kimiyo’s main narrative focuses on the journey of a young person who wrote to Foster years after their encounter to share pieces of her journey about how she found a new sense of self after thinking of taking her life upon becoming unwillingly pregnant, but unable to fathom the idea of ending her life or her pregnancy, she became hateful towards the burgeoning existence slowly taking over her body, but found a fulfilling form of hope for her present and future self emerging from feeling the baby starting to move inside of her body.
She then envisioned a life of her own, a purpose she had never imagined being able to find anywhere - especially not within herself - but lost the child following a miscarriage, leaving her empty again, but somehow transformed. She had learned that happiness is a measure of the heart and soul, accepting that purpose is something that grows from within, but, as Foster exposed it, while the tree might too often hide the beautiful density of a forest, there are lights that are simply way too bright to be hidden.
Alex Henry Foster's new project Voyage à la Mer is an artistic multidisciplinary endeavor based on the asymmetry of human emotions. While the project refers to the title of a self-searching poetry and meditative notebook he started writing during a trip to Japan back in 2010, it also symbolizes the fundamental connection that individuals and communities nurture with water, the beginning of time, ritualistic pilgrimages, redemptive processions, purification, the incarnation related to the flow of life, birth and death, the passage to afterlife, transition, and rebirth.
Foster underwent a life-altering cardiac surgery. He spent months recovering, unable to talk, and unsure he would have the ability to sing in the future. Foster writes: “I was in no other position than to either feel sorry for myself or have a prolonged look with myself to figure out who I was beyond the distressing sensation of losing my identity. The introspective clarity brought me right back to Japan, in what had been for me a transformative experience almost 15 years ago, highlighted by the long-forgotten fragments of film, photographs, and people's testimonies I had the privilege of witnessing.” Slowly starting to regain energy, Foster contacted his friend and longtime creative accomplice Ben Lemelin to assist him in writing and creating. With Foster still regaining his voice, the duo invited fellow artist Momoka to be the voice of the first incarnation of the project, titled Kimiyo.
Alex Henry Foster has crafted four different creative entities; the albums Kimiyo and A Measure of Space and Sounds, the film Voyage à la Mer, and the in-public conversations & live musical improvisation affair Of Flashes and Other Currents, all due to be released over the span of 2024.
