Quarantine

Quarantine is the debut album by American electronic musician Laurel Halo, released on May 21, 2012 by Hyperdub. It received acclaim from critics, and was named release of the year by British magazine The Wire. Background Halo recorded Quarantine between July 2011 and February 2012 primarily in her home studio, with some instrument tracks also recorded in London. She made over thirty demos, eighteen of which were deleted. In November 2011, Halo sent the LP demos to Hyperdub label head Steve Goodman, who responded with positive interest. Initially applying extensive echo and reverb to her vocals, which she found "supremely boring", Halo instead opted to leave them dry and unadorned, stating that "it was tempting to use autotune but I decided against it because there's this brutal, sensual ugliness in the vocals uncorrected, and painfully human vocals made sense." Speaking to Fact, she described the album's thematic focus as "contrails, trauma, volatile chemicals, viruses." The album cover features an adaptation of Harakiri School Girls, a work by Makoto Aida which Halo chose for the artwork after seeing it at an exhibition on Japanese pop art in New York. She stated that "I love that it's brutal and violent but colourful and slow to sink in."