Here, she started to explore the electronic and ambient scene, eventually meeting sound designer and producer Aviad Zinemanas. Together, the pair began to work on demos Polanski had written, a collection of songs that would eventually become the debut Zoe Polanski full-length, Violent Flowers, which is being released next month on New York label Youngbloods.

Today we have the pleasure of unveiling the album’s first single, ‘Pharoah’s Island’. The song is inspired by the titular island, located in the Gulf of Aqaba, which has been the site of a fortress for centuries. Now, like many shallow areas of the Red Sea, the island is renowned for a different reason. “What enchanted me about the place was the fact that underneath this militarized land there is a parallel universe that exists underwater,” Polanski explains. “In the base of the island [lives] an exceptionally rich colony of corals and marine life.”

This sense of submerged tropical diversity bubbles forth immediately. Arising from the unplanned marriage between a guitar loop and a goblet drum rhythm, the song is bathed in blue-green atmospherics, shimmering with hazy streaks of colour. There are elements of Beach House’s dreamy soundscapes, crossed with the near-devotional tones of Julianna Barwick and the alternate-dimension pop of Purity Ring, a blend which marks Zoe Polanski as a creative force to watch.

Fire away, it’s a landslide
Too many times you held back
Fire away, crystal soldier
You are soon to forget
What goes down
In your heart that burns with endless fire
In your heart that takes you higher and higher
In your heart that burns with endless fire
In your heart

Violent Flowers is out July 15th on LP and digital via Youngbloods. You can pre-order it from the Zoe Polanski Bandcamp page.

Main photo by Ori Kroll

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