Founded in 2015, Tears|Ov are sound artist/self-taught musician Lori E Allen, classically trained cellist/mixed media artist Katie Spafford and illustrator/prison psychotherapist Deborah Wale. The trio first collaborated on Lori E Allen's 'Tears of the Material Vulture' cassette on The Tapeworm, a re-imagination of a brief collaboration with Madame Chaos of cut-up cablecasts, 1995-1996, on Manhattan Neighborhood Network and Television in New York City. That release served to resurrect a hibernating creative practice between the three friends.

'A Hopeless Place' is the lead track from Tears|Ov’s debut long player of the same name. The album was initiated by a commission from Wolfgang Tillmans to perform at the Tate Modern's South Tanks, part of a concert series curated by the artist in parallel to his 2017 retrospective at the gallery. 'We were asked to play a gig at the Tate in March 2017' recalls Lori. 'I'd already started on some of the tracks, but it gave us an opportunity to present them as a composition around their connected themes. Sometime after the gig we decided to capture the work and turn it in to an album.'