Asthmatic Kitty Records

My Brightest Diamond

I Had Grown Wild

Catalog: ARK344
Release date: May 18, 2015

Limited Edition (500) Translucent Blue vinyl available Fall 2015.


I Had Grown Wild is the cumulative EP in a series of releases that began in 2014, and is the followup to the success My Brightest Diamond’s 2014 full-length This Is My Hand. This EP of six tracks includes two new original songs from MBD, and a remix of “This Is My Hand” in both English and French.

The EP begins with a minimalist but driving remix of the LP’s title track, “This Is My Hand,” sung in French. “Say What”, inspired by a poem by Staceyann Chin, recontextualizes images from Billy Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” and issues a challenge to compare and contrast the experience of black and white Americans. Continuing on the subject of children, “Bronze Head” lets off the steam with text taken directly from William Butler Yeats’ poem by the same name. Birth, the body, and the afterlife all take their places on this EP, with the concluding song “Apparition”. Since first singing Stephane (2 accents needed) Mallarme’s poem set by Claude Debussy for the song cycle “Quatre chansons de jeunesse” in college when she was studying classical voice, Shara fell in love with the image of the ghost who with glowing hair who leaves behind a trail of white bouquets of perfumed stars.

Bonus tracks include an English version of the remix of “This Is My Hand,” and a remix of “Lover Killer” by The Hood Internet.