Premiere: Eszter Balint Shows No Shortage of Ambition on New Album ‘I HATE MEMORY!’

As she has learned, adapted, and progressed through her musical journey, Eszter Balint has proactively and enthusiastically sought out the next big creative challenge for herself. Having already set the bar very high for herself with her previous releases, Balint has again set it even higher with the release of her latest offering, I HATE MEMORY! via Red Herring Records. Her fourth studio record, Balint wrote and recorded this ambitious set of new songs with a wide array of instrumentalists and performers who helped bring her vision to life.

The songs were inspired by Balint’s evolution, growing up in communist Hungary in the 1970s and 1980s and then finding her way to New York City, where she was exposed to her parents’ radical theatre group and all of the different cultures and subcultures that the city has to offer. Being exposed to the sex, drugs, poverty, glamour, and art of Lower Manhattan had a profound effect on her, and I HATE MEMORY! is her exposé on these experiences.

Further expounding on the conceptual basis of the record, Balint tells us:

“The album is a sort of collage; a collection of vignettes that form an impressionistic story. The songs are scenes based on memories, which paint a picture of a girl coming into young adulthood in a truly unique place and time: late-1970s to mid-1980s downtown New York.

“The story, such as it is, is not exactly linear, nor etched in stone. It keeps shifting and evolving, for me, too, its author, teaching me things about my own experience. It even breaks to comment on the difficulty of the task at hand: telling one’s story and revisiting memories. It’s working it out in real-time, hopefully in a playful way.

“The album is a sort of collage; a collection of vignettes that form an impressionistic story.”

“As it turns out, amidst the highly unusual, even outrageous goings on, it is all the ordinary essential human longings, insecurities, joys, and bonds which stick out and weave these fragments into a whole.”

Balint’s primary collaborator on this project was producer and musician Stew, who she met through mutual friends in 2015. Stew is a singer-songwriter and playwright best known for his innovative early 1990s band, The Negro Problem. Stew was the first one to suggest that she do a show about her life growing up in Manhattan, which at first she was reluctant to do, until he helped her realize how worthwhile it could actually be. Stew co-wrote many of these songs that enthusiastically delve into topics such as oppression, freedom, and the dreams and lost dreams of America.

Interestingly enough, Balint and Stew are developing an “anti-musical” based on this album through an ongoing series of shows staged at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan. It’s a testament to the vastness and ambitiousness of Balint as both an artist and an individual with a fascinating story to tell.

I HATE MEMORY! Track Listing:

1. Memory Song
2. Before American (Newsreel America)
3. The First Day
4. Campfire At The Chelsea
5. Art Bodega Nation
6. After The Party (Fifteen)
7. Second Avenue
8. Freaks
9. Privacy
10. Bewildered in ’86
11. Nostalgia

Artwork for the album ‘I HATE MEMORY’ by Eszter Balint