Em Spel is the solo project of Chicago-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Emma Hospelhorn. Her debut album, The Carillon Towers, was released in 2022. Hospelhorn is a flutist in the avant-classical group Ensemble Dal Niente, and her discography includes work on flutes, bass guitar, and keyboards for V.V. Lightbody, Mute Duo, and others working in a diverse array of genres that she fuses together with story-driven lyrics to create invitingly strange folk vignettes.
“This has been one of my favorite songs to play live for a while now. Lyrically and musically, the song plays with the idea of the familiar and the strange — the people who you know and don’t know, the ideas that have been part of your life for so long you haven’t really examined them. The flute sounds on this recording also reflect this theme— when they first show up, they’re not really recognizable as flutes because they’re so distorted. It’s only when the song begins to blossom and grow that they become their recognizable selves,” says Spel.
