Ainsworth developed her first solo recordings from audio sketches she made while enrolled at Montreal's McGill University. Splitting her time between Toronto and Brooklyn, Ainsworth recorded for years, drawing on her love of a wide variety of shadowy musical influences as well as her background in composing and orchestration to craft her tracks. A self-taught cellist, Ainsworth blended string arrangements and vocal samples into her tunes, augmenting sparse, eerie electronic beats with walls of densely layered vocals. Her debut album, Right from Real, appeared in 2015 on Arbutus Records, and went on to be nominated for "best electronic album" at that year's Juno Awards, as well as being shortlisted for the Polaris Prize. Her second LP, Darling of the Afterglow, arrived on Arbutus and Bella Union in 2017, pushing more in the direction of familiar pop rhythms and song structures. Ainsworth toured extensively in support of the album, sharing bills with Perfume Genius along with headlining spots of her own. 2019's Phantom Forest continued in an even more mainstream pop direction than the splintered, experimental feel of her earlier work. To accompany the album, Ainsworth arranged remixes of four Phantom Forest tracks that stripped them down to their core melodic elements and added complex string parts. Later in 2019, "Earth Song," Ainsworth's collaborative track with Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, was featured in the final episode of the third season of the Netflix show Stranger Things. Ainsworth spent the next two years working towards fourth album Sparkles Debris. The album broke out of her self-reliant production style somewhat, as Ainsworth worked closely with various musicians and engineers to integrate live instruments in with her sample-heavy compositions. The album was released in May of 2021. ~ Fred Thomas, Rovi
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