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“In chess, the opening moves are the most important,” Lydia Ainsworth tells me, but won’t go into further detail lest future opponents learn to anticipate her strategy. The Toronto-based experimental pop composer took up playing online simulators and later moved to competing with friends and fans who challenged her on Instagram when mysterious bouts of vertigo made it difficult for her to focus on little else. Though the unexplained vertigo faded, playing chess made a fitting theme for a video set to “Diamonds Cutting Diamonds,” the first track on her Phantom Forest<\/em><\/a> LP, released last year. Not only does the song open her album, it was the first one she completed for the collection – an opening move that determined the rest of her shrewd compositional decisions and ultimately led to a victorious marriage of her classical training with modern sounds and ideas.<\/p>\n

“I had been working and working on [a new album] for ages, and I couldn\u2019t crack the code,” she remembers. “I called [the song] ‘Diamonds Cutting Diamonds’ because it went through many stages and I was just hacking away at it.” Lyrically inspired by a reading of landmark 1992 tome Women Who Run With the Wolves<\/em> by Jungian analyst Clarissa Pinkola Est\u00e9s, the song encourages the same reawakening of the wild inner self – a source of creativity, passion, intuition, and strength – and celebrates the “wild woman” archetype as a means of empowerment. “Baby hides her claws again\/She’s twitching but won’t let it show\/Masking inner wildlife\/Be what you are and let it go,” Ainsworth trills over her slinky synth bassline. She took her own advice to heart, self-releasing Phantom Forest<\/em> as a means of retaining ownership over her creative work, and embracing what has become her trademark sound – a unique m\u00e9lange of of ethereal voicework, futuristic textures, orchestral arrangements, and biting observation delivered in a disarmingly dance-worthy package.<\/p>\n

At every turn, the video for “Diamonds Cutting Diamonds” reflects both internal pressure and the positive results that can arise from it (as Ainsworth promises, “Failure draws a crystal out from underneath a curse”). Graceful choreography (courtesy of Kalie Hunter, who runs a dance studio called Metro Movement near Ainsworth’s home) depicts a bull and a matador in an endless, teasing standoff; Ainsworth kicks useless pawns out of her path; characters hold signs that boldly spell “HAVE NO FEAR.” Directed by Ainsworth’s younger sister Abby (who also directed a clip for Phantom Forest<\/em> cut “Can You Find Her Place<\/a>“), the video has a dream-like feel, owed in no small part to the fact that it was shot mostly in slow motion, with the dancers performing in double-time to accommodate. Ainsworth twirls around the life-sized chess board in a truly stunning costume composed of white feathers (designed by Emily Kowalik), a reference to the “bird of prey” motif in the song, which hearkens back to the wild woman archetype. All of it works together to create an intriguing blueprint of the ideas at play within the song itself, and cements Ainsworth herself as a true artistic visionary.<\/p>\n