Is there a container big enough to hold grief, in all its vastness? Maya Bon, the artist behind Babehoven, built the Nastavi, Calliope EP after a cascade of losses, a vessel into which she poured two years of heartache, humor, and rage, then the growth that bookended these cataclysms. Evocative of Arthur Russell’s Love is Overtaking Me or Julia Jacklin’s Crushing, it balances meticulously between the universality of emotion and the particulars that crack you open—barefoot eating Thai food alone in a morning kitchen, or the memory of Calliope, a beloved family dog and the EP’s namesake. There is no containing grief, but Nastavi, Calliope lets us gaze into a fragment of it like a broken mirror—a sharp, incisive revelation.
Bon asked artists she admired to join together to build a remix team, allowing them the space to reimagine the songs in entirely new forms. Of the remix EP, Bon states “Listening to these remixes fills me up and reminds me of the ways that we each experience and explore our sonic capabilities.” Nastavi, Calliope was originally recorded in Arlington, Vermont during quarantine isolation and then remixed by artists in New York and LA.
Album art by Maya Bon. Artists pictured in the photo: Avery Tucker, Thanya Iyer, Casino Hearts (Jacob Rubeck), Orange Baker Shaw (Ruben Radlauer), Claire George, Emily Yacina, and Madge. They are pictured surrounding a miniature model of Calliope, Bon’s childhood dog located in the center (the model was made by Hannah and Saskia Krut-Powell who are artists based in London).
credits
released August 27, 2021
Thank you to Avery Tucker, Thanya Iyer, Casino Hearts (Jacob Rubeck), Orange Baker Shaw (Ruben Radlauer), Claire George, Emily Yacina, and Madge for their incredible remixes!
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