The Idealist: CD
a six-song EP by Flora ElmColone. When I first learned that I would get to go into a studio to record an EP this summer, my first instinct was to record a collection of my favorite original songs, and the ones I had the greatest personal and emotional connection to. But after mapping out what that would look like, I realized it wasn’t a very
a six-song EP by Flora ElmColone. When I first learned that I would get to go into a studio to record an EP this summer, my first instinct was to record a collection of my favorite original songs, and the ones I had the greatest personal and emotional connection to. But after mapping out what that would look like, I realized it wasn’t a very cohesive project when put together, and cohesion and flow between tracks—overarching messages and themes—is something I look for as a listener, and something that all of my favorite records have. I started to think about what I wanted to say as an artist, and what kind of theme I wanted for my first ever published project. I ended up coming up with a collection that felt the most authentic to where I was in my life as a (then) 21-year-old about to graduate from college, which dealt with the ways we perform our identities and struggles for personal autonomy and authenticity. It wasn’t until I wrote the last track on the EP, “The Arsonist” (just a few weeks before I was scheduled to go into the studio) that the project became fully formed in my mind. I had written “The Contortionist” about a month prior, and I realized that these were all different ways of describing and identifying myself—the contortionist, the arsonist, and ultimately, the idealist. I also think it’s important that all of the songs on this EP were written in 2020 or 2021 during quarantine. When you spend a year in isolation, your daily performance of self eventually begins to falter, and thus becomes recognizable in retrospect. From the desire to be a character in a world in which everything is all figured out and you’re living in your dream house in “I Want To Have a Garden,” to the cathartic burning of an old identity that strove for desirability in “Reincarnation,” this collection is a reflection of the fear and the hope that are two sides of the same coin. – Flora ElmColone Aug. 2021