Establishing the mood with a dramatic and cinematic soundscape featuring spiritual drum work, Emilie Reid opens House of the Silent with intrigue before the composition expands into a dynamic 80s-disco adjacency. Emilie shares the situational, narrative-driven lyrics, “Come on the night train with me, find your rhythm, baby, I don’t mind, because tomorrow is someone else’s ride, chaos in the house, there’s always chaos in the house, so much chaos in the house, of the silent…”
We immediately connect with the poetic prowess that manifests and the unique nature of the track, which almost feels like a movie in itself. Emilie’s vocal performance is captivating, whilst the psychedelic nuances add a trippy energy to the highly dynamic piece. The guitar solo is an added transcendental touch too.
As for the message, House of the Silent is about notions of inner turmoil. It taps into the toxic intimacy and chaos that can exist inside a relationship and within oneself. The metaphorical house symbolizes our mind or a relationship, where desire, hurt, isolation, and a struggle to maintain sanity all collide.
Speaking on the raw and authentic inspiration behind the release, Emilie confesses, “I wrote House of the Silent from the contradictions of getting sober – a song not necessarily autobiographical, but for anyone who has battled demons. Specifically the way getting sober doesn’t silence the hunger, it just redirects it.”
She adds with reference to her influences, “That world of Prince, Donna Summer, Studio 54 – that whole era of pure, uninhibited energy – reminded me of my teenage years; I felt like I knew it intimately. Glorious and dangerous in equal measure. There was so much joy in the shadow side, the parts that society at times has told me to be ashamed of. I wanted the song to hold all of that at once – the grief and the joy, the longing and the gratitude, truly mourning what’s been left behind. Sonically, I wanted pure ecstasy, but lyrically, there is a darkness, a softness and vulnerability lost in the newfound stability of the silence.”
We could imagine House of the Silent landing a sync placement in a film like The Neon Demon, Last Night in Soho or Babygirl, as there is something inherently cinematic about the juxtaposition of the euphoric disco pulse and the darker emotional undercurrent. For some context, Emilie Reid is a British-born, LA-based singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist who has only recently begun releasing music, yet the track already demonstrates a remarkably assured production identity. Building on her debut album, Leopard~Sukha, she pushes further into synth-driven disco, live-feeling drums and retrofuturistic textures, allowing the music to embody the contradiction at the heart of the song: outwardly ecstatic, but emotionally shadowed. For some context, “sukha” is a term in Sanskrit for stability, often used in yoga, so this really resonates within her wider work too.
Needless to say, we are in awe, and have added House of the Silent to our New Music Spotlight playlist, and our TIMELESS and TRIPPY playlists, whilst we continue to stream the wider discography of Emilie Reid, including the entirety of Leopard~Sukha.