Gerogia based experimental vocalist Jarboe released her latest album Illusory on 17 April via Consouling Sounds. In an interview with The Wire's Claire Biddles in issue 434, the artist explains how her recent travels have influenced her songwriting. Subscribers can read the article via the digital archive. In this playlist, Jarboe selects tracks from her back catalogue of various solo projects and collaborations, divulging what inspired them and how they came to fruition.

“Man Of Hate” references an Elizabethan play before lords and ladies and their court. As the narrator, I describe the lavish production in humility and ask for pity. The narrator says everyone is a part of the man of hate. In the latest recorded version of the song, which is on the album entitled Illusory, everyone is beheaded.

“My Struggle” from the collaborative project Blackmouth is where my words and voice are actually a dialogue. I portray the role of both the accuser and the accused. The song is addressed to one from a seeming life of privilege who brags about sexuality as a means of empowerment and a hunger strike not out of necessity but as a chosen means of rebellion. The accused then defends his actions saying you cannot know my personal struggle. This dialogue technique has been used numerous times as in the song “Indemnity’” for example.

“Black Eyed Dog” is an interpretation of Nick Drake’s song. I multi-track howls and use a sort of Appalachian dialect - a vernacular as portal to different tonalities and accents. Another example where I use this particular dialect is “Within”, a song with Neurosis, and a song with Swans entitled “Hypogirl”.

“Blackmail” is the first song I sang as the opening of the set alone on stage in Swans. I especially like the first recording of the song which was a B side on a Swans record. It has a naiveté that is endearing.

“In My Garden” is a song I composed when I was attending university in Atlanta. I had an old upright piano and I’d hold the sustain pedals down for a moody effect. Later the song was recorded in the studio in Cornwall, England for Swans' Children Of God album.

“Forever” is from the Anhedoniac album. The graphic words use cancer as a metaphor for the breakdown of a marriage into divorce.

“Dear 666” is a blues song where the words and the melody came immediately and effortlessly to me as if channeling. The song is a commentary about abusers and a victim mindset.

“Receive” is to my mother who had died not long before this collaboration with Neurosis. I ask her to receive me in her arms when I will die.

“Lavender Girl” was written in the room where I was living at the recording studio building in Chicago for Swans' The Great Annihilator album. The building had a severe mosquito infestation. The bites were unrelenting. It was a vile circumstance. I discovered that continuously burning incense in the room kept them away from me. The lyrics are an ode to this incense which saved me.

“Troll Lullaby” is a song inspired by memories of vivid visions experienced as a result of experimentation with hallucinogens as a teenager. The melody is intended as a demented nursery rhyme while warning of a chamber of horrors and not to fall asleep lest the troll eat you.

“Deflowered” and “Volcano” are both a commentary about being a girl in a rock band and the perceptions and cliches therein.

”Scorpion” is deliberately seductive in the recording and vocal delivery yet exploring a dangerous lesson learned by giving a lover power over you. If true power is the ability to experience vulnerability, then one both inflicts and receives pain. There is a reference to silk threads as a web and acknowledgment that the scorpion venom is addictive.