The World Inside is Zoe Ackah’s first release in two decades. Deeply personal and gentle, the warm production, glistening and magic, takes the listener on a tour through the inside of a generous heart and pure soul born into a harsh and lonely reality.

Recorded at home during Covid and mixed remotely in India by San Page, Zoe is supported by guitarist and producer Aron Niytunga, Ian de Souza, with special appearances by Rebecca Hennessy, Peter Hill and Michael Eckert.

Slow Down River is a song about the necessity and inevitability of death. “I wrote it after one of my closest friends died slowly of cancer, then my mother was diagnosed, then my boyfriend, then my neighbour passed away from cancer and left me her dog - all in an 18 month period.”

Let a Little Light In and Nobody No One deal with social isolation and ostracization as well as issues of institutional trauma, themes that recur in Zoe’s work. Answer Me When I Call is a modern day psalm for the socially excluded and disenfranchised. Lonesome Whisper was foreshadowing for Zoe’s next project, Country/Roots album This Hen.

This Hen is a tender and humorous Country/Roots/Americana album that simultaneously celebrates and interrogates subjects of motherhood, marriage, and romance.

“This album is about how we view our past. I dedicated it to my grandmothers to pay homage to my own Southern roots,” says Ackah. “Every song has a story to tell. Sometime I Miss You (But My Aim is Getting Better) started with a collection of horrible jokes my mother found in my grandfather's personal effects after he passed away. Just a Trickle is a reflection of my own experiences with homelessness and a recent experience with a mentally ill friend who disappeared into the streets. What’s a Little Fire is about me burning down the cabin in the woods I lived in as a child. Gotta Stop Loving You and Let Somebody Love You are about love that doesn’t quite work. But just as they did in my grandmothers’ time, I talk about many heavy subjects with the tenderness and lightheartedness still expected of women.”

The title track This Hen is about Zoe’s life as a single mother raising three children alone. “Motherhood could have ended my career. I sang a lot of hit songs into the kitchen sink. When we wonder why there are so few women producers, and why we are so vastly outnumbered in every area of the music business, it is because a musician's schedule and a mother’s are often at odds. This Hen is very much about that struggle.”

This Hen features lush arrangements by Kevin Breit, Rebecca Hennessey and features drummer Davide De Renzo and bass player Ian de Souza.

This song is from the project Love’s Imaginarium. Songs for healing, relaxed focus and mediation that feature the Solfeggio frequencies, EMDR friendly bilateral stimulation for emotional processing, isochronic pulses or tones that entrain and relax the brain and musical beauty. Created as an act of love from the composer to the listener Love’s Imaginarium harmoniously blends conventions of New Age music with emerging brain science and trauma recovery (PTSD & C-PTSD) protocols. Satisfying auditory textures and brain stimulation are mixed in luscious Dolby Atmos to maximize Autonomous Sensory Motor Response ASMR for stimulation and relaxation. Several of the songs on this project are set in 5.1 surround recordings of nature licensed from BOOM audio.

Photo by Raychel Sanner/Unsplash