Afterlight

After the stop comes the start. After the dark; the light. This is not a drill. Afterlight is a real account of one woman’s journey from impressionable 16-year-old bound into a toxic working and romantic relationship with a man 23 years her senior, to a brand new artist and free woman finding her own beginning.

Written, produced and performed by Afterlight (the artist we once knew as Thea Gilmore, with 19 albums to her name), the eponymous debut spans the brutal truth of the opening track – an account of all the damage, both physical and mental, wrought upon one small life – through the slow, painful realisation that her entire world was built on control and lies, on to the emergence of a woman learning for the first time who she really is, making new connections and, finally, finding her own voice.

Only now that she has freed herself of that life has Afterlight been able to complete a different kind of debut – not so much a new artist as an artist renewed.

The songs on the album might share subject matter with The Emancipation of Eva Grey, the judiciously joyous jazz excursion that mark the final Thea Gilmore release for a while, but make no mistake Afterlight is a very different proposition.