Keeley Forsyth’s third album The Hollow explores the essence of solitude through a stark minimal framework. Composed with producer Ross Downes, the album takes its inspiration from an abandoned mineshaft in the North Yorkshire countryside near to where Forsyth is based. The small excavated room became a metaphor for how Forsyth saw her own voice – a resonating chamber channelling complex emotions – which is often compared to the likes of Scott Walker and Anohni.

Like its predecessor, Limbs (2022), the visual aesthetic of The Hollow is largely rooted in the landscape and mediated through monochromatic storytelling that echoes the work of the Hungarian film maker Béla Tarr. The album’s first single “Horse” reimagines Mihály Víg’s soundtrack for Tarr’s final film The Turin Horse (2011) with the music video picking up on the film’s themes of domestic duty, poverty and love.

Forsyth’s background in acting and dance informs her performative stage presence as well as the characters that inhabit her desolate musical world. Ahead of her concert at the ICA in London on 23 May, which will see The Hollow performed in full, we discuss her love for Pina Bausch, collaboration with Colin Stetson and the political dimensions of the voice.

Ilia Rogatchevski: The Hollow feels like an extension of your previous record Limbs, both aesthetically – the gestures, electronics, monochromatic palette – and in terms of the symbolism. What were the concepts and emotions that you were exploring for this album?

Keeley Forsyth: I definitely haven't ventured out of that space. I don't know whether it's possible. I think the only way I travel emotionally, when I'm making work, is the reverse. I travel into that sweet spot of feeling where you’re so connected, but at the same time evoking something singular. The sense of what you know; the sense of daily life.

I like to take myself to that pinpoint, which made sense when coming across the mineshaft that The Hollow is based around. Walking into that reminded me of the psychology of where I go when I'm making work. You're leaving something, but entering a space that feels truthful. It feels like this is where everything has come from. It’s telling the everyday stories of people's lives.

Can you tell me about this mineshaft? You came across it on a walk in the moors?

Ross and I were in the middle of writing the record and just went for a bit of air. We were going on walks on the moors and found this abandoned place. When we came back, we realised that there was a part of us that was still in the mineshaft. It made sense, because, vocally, I'm always interested in the mouth area: the throat, the carcass of what we are. When I'm singing, I try to become this hollow space. So having that visual in my head with a mineshaft really helped.

I'm from the north [of England] and never thought that I would be making work around this kind of landscape. Every time I'm offered a chance to connect [with it] I have to throw myself into it. This is what the mineshaft became and the fact that it was partly dangerous and abandoned made sense. It became the set for the visuals of the music.

The landscape comes up again and again in your work. You have a performance piece called Bog Body and, in other music videos such as “Bring Me Water” and “Debris”, you examine the landscape, earth and soil. Why do you keep returning to the landscape as material?

It's not the actual textures of what that feeling gives us, it's about light and shade. There's a reason why the visual work is black and white, because I feel that there's a light and shade to the stuff that I want to make. When I'm going underneath and inside, it doesn't mean that it's in a lower or higher resonance of one's being. Sometimes there's the ability to come out of it, which is when the greys happen, but it's a very black and white world that I'm in.

With Béla Tarr, you can put all of his work together. Sátántangó is like 430 minutes long. Not that I'm comparing my work to Béla Tarr, but it's the same sense of being able to put this whole montage together of sounds and visuals. It's one piece. I’m only doing little snippets, but it all makes sense. I decided a long time ago that I would plant myself out in the moors and it will stay that way for the duration of my music career.

When did you come across the work of Béla Tarr?

I can't even remember. More so since working with Ross. He is a massive film fanatic. Our conversations are definitely film based when we're talking about music. He's encouraged that to come to the surface. Obviously, you don't want to recreate someone else's work, but it's a feeling that you get which you then run with yourself. Ross and I have that same feeling with Béla Tarr and a few other artists. It's really difficult to make work in such simple ways.

What was it about The Turin Horse that moved you to reimagine the soundtrack?

It was the character of the woman in it [Erika Bók]. I don't know whether this kind of exercise is from being an actor, but you watch something and you slowly become it. I was watching The Turin Horse and I was going through the gestures with her. From that character started the muttering. If she could speak, what would she be saying? Even the house reminded me of that Beckett play [Quad, 1982] where it's just four figures and they're moving around. There are no words, just movement.

How does the composition process work for you? This time you’re mostly collaborating with Ross Downes, but [English composer] Matthew Bourne was somebody you worked with on Debris (2020). What is it that you're striving for when working together?

The core team is myself, Ross Downes and Matthew Bourne. All three of us work together on the performance side of things. In the studio, it's usually a direct conversation with one or the other, because my background is as a dancer, actor and a singer. I'm not a musician so I work with these guys to help me build a sound world.

That sound world might start with a tone on the pedal harmonium and then I can come in singing. I also work with an amazing guy called Adrian Shaw who sends me these stream of consciousness rants and poems. It's a very visceral way of writing that he has. I'll take these words like pieces of flesh.

I wouldn't say I'm a collaborator. I find it hard to work with people. This core team will always remain, because without them, I wouldn't have any records. Matthew is the most talented person you could ever meet, very generous. Ross is the same. I've somehow managed to attach myself to them. They have the energy to really take it where it needs to be.

The track “Turning” features Colin Stetson. How did that collaboration come about and what does he bring to the saxophone that other players do not?

There’s a similarity in how Colin and I approach what we do. The breath is the body. When I'm singing, I don't actually think of the voice coming from here [points to the mouth], I think of another element coming in and making the voice, like you would push an instrument.

I've not had a conversation with him about this. This is only my interpretation of how he works, but that seems to be a thing that he embodies. I've worked with Evelyn Glennie before and she has the same thing with her instrument. It just becomes part of the whole thing that you are, not just the skill that someone has.

I didn't think Colin would say yes. He seems to have such a work ethic. I'm not personally into artists drenched in suffering. I'm more attracted to the kind of person who is clear with their boundaries, like they’re clocking in and out of work. I had to raise my game working with someone like him.

You sometimes get compared to Scott Walker, Nico and Anohni. What I find interesting about those singers is that their vocal range is always beyond gender. You’ve previously talked about adapting the naturally low tone of your voice to a higher pitch, when teased about it at school. So even in ordinary situations the voice becomes politicised. Is this something that you consciously investigate with your music?

It's definitely genderless and the singers that I’m drawn to have that element. To get that independent thought you really have to dig and dismiss all preconceived ideas of oneself. My struggle with the voice, for a long time, was that I didn't know where to place it. But that's just human existence, isn't it? We're all trying to work out where we fit and then we realise that the ‘fitting’ is just a self-imposed myth anyway.

The moment I really started to feel massively free as a singer was hearing Scott Walker. He was the first person who gave me permission to stand in the same spaces and not feel that I had to justify what I was doing, why I was doing it, why it was sounding this way. When I first started making music, the people in my family would cover their ears and just say it's horrible, you know? It was not something I felt upset about because, in that [Antonin] Artaud way, it's like poking at something, making them feel uncomfortable.

You've mentioned Artaud, as well as Beckett. Pina Bausch is also an important influence for you. Is this what informs how you move on stage and the characters you inhabit?

Yeah, the performance side is the thing that I love the most. The record is part of it but it’s only within that framework of the stage that I can really understand what’s going on. It's like your carcass has expanded to the outside of the mineshaft and it feels like that on stage.

I'm completely in awe of Pina Bausch. There are those artists that, when you come across their work, you just know it. Like, I am supposed to be here right now experiencing this. I recognise it and, through recognising their work, I recognise a part of myself.

How does The Hollow translate onto the stage? Are you performing it in its entirety?

Yeah, this is the first time that I've done that. It's the whole record in its entirety and there's also a middle section as well. In an ideal world, I would love to do the kind of bigger master show but equally I'm happy just dragging a chair on stage like Pina Bausch in Café Müller. You don't need anything else. It is a piece of theatre that I'm trying to make. I'm not there yet, but, you know, I'm on the journey.

Keeley Forsyth will be performing at London’s ICA on 23 May. The Hollow is released by 130701.