Ex:Re - Save As

Ex:Re - Save As is the second solo album from Elena Tonra's Ex:Re project, extending the intimate songwriting language of the Daughter vocalist into another collection concerned with the small, persistent thoughts that shape everyday experience. Rather than following one overarching storyline, the album moves through over-thinking, indecision, escape, relationships and self-questioning, allowing individual songs to capture different corners of the same restless interior world.

The record was produced by Fabian Prynn and features Josephine Stephenson on cello, Hinako Omori on synthesisers, Ben Reed on bass and Jethro Fox on electric guitar. Its sound combines carefully developed studio arrangements with traces of the demos and first impulses from which the songs emerged. That balance is central to Save As: long-held ideas preserved in notebooks and laptops sit alongside improvisation and immediate decisions, creating music that can feel both considered and unusually close to the moment of creation.

“Radio Station” begins with stately acoustic guitar before developing into a more disorientating account of an endless California road trip, with Tonra using the idea of a radio station as a metaphor for her own mind. “Sleep” retains material from a hotel-room demo recorded in Paris; its acoustic guitar was processed through a vocoder and combined with a drum machine to create a distant, muffled atmosphere. “Am I Even Real?”, a duet between Tonra and Prynn, uses images of spaceships to explore questions of authenticity within a relationship.

The album contains nine tracks, moving from “Radio Station” through “Sleep,” “Am I Even Real?”, “Two Chords,” the title track, “Frozen Aisle,” “Wasp” and “Language of Love” to “Healing (Slow).” This vinyl release is available as a standard black LP and an indies-only crystal clear vinyl edition. Both versions present the same album, a thoughtful and textural continuation of Tonra's work under the Ex:Re name.