Arthur Ashin – best known by his artistic name Autre Ne Veut – has announced that he will be releasing a new album. It’s titled Age of Transparency.
As the follow-up to Ashin’s critically acclaimed 2013 release, Anxiety, Age of Transparency is due out on October 2nd, 2015, via Downtown Records. And, according to a press release, this new album is “a genre-bending album, that manipulates and fuses jazz, electronic and alternative elements…”.
The Age of Transparency is the second project, which stems out of a trilogy that examines the difficulty of making personal connections in a time when the world is very often impersonal.
“The title comes from marketing jargon,” Ashin explained in a press release. “It’s a term for the place we’re in now, where truth and transparency are just ways to sell things and honesty is its own kind of performance.”
“Transparency is an impossibility,” he elaborated in the same release. “It’s more about trying to be transparent and falling on your face in the process.”
As a means of exploring this idea, Ashin began the sessions for this album at Manhattan’s Avatar Studios, with a jazz combo. “I’ve been listening to jazz since I was a kid and wanted to experiment with it,” he said in a press release. “For me, it taps into this comforting and antiquated image of the truth.”
Then, he took the recordings to his home studio and “kept flipping them and messing with them.” This process is obvious on the album’s title track, which begins with a loose late-60s Pharoah Sanders-inspired vibe, but then moves and settles into Ashin’s take on R&B sounds.
“The players are there to give you an impression of transparency,” he said in a press release, “but they’re constantly being disrupted.”
The final set of songs that are on Age of Transparency were produced by Ashin, himself, in Brooklyn, New York; then, they were mixed by Tony Maserati, who has also worked with Beyoncé, Notorious B.I.G. and Lady Gaga, amongst other well-known names in music.
Check out the album’s cover art and tracklisting, below.
Autre Ne Veut – Age of Transparency
(Downtown – October 2nd, 2015)
1. On and On (Reprise)
2. Panic Room
3. Cold Winds
4. Age of Transparency
5. Switch Hitter
6. Never Wanted
7. Word War Pt. 2
8. Over Now
9. Get Out
In addition to this new album announcement, Ashin has premiered a music video for the album’s first single, “World War Pt. 2.”
This music video was directed by Allie Avital, of the Brooklyn-based creative team Bangs. After being inspired by the Michael Haneke films Funny Games and Amour, where “the horrific and grotesque emerge from mundane, sunlight environments,” in a release, Avital said that she and Ashin were wanting to create “a metaphor for the many burdens we carry with us.”
Their final creation for “World War Pt. 2” is bizarre, yet intriguing, because it lacks a cohesive narrative, which enables the viewer to place their own interpretation on the two characters’ interactions. Lastly, take note that although the two people on the screen are naked, the shots were tastefully done, and focuses on their necks, backs, and shaved heads without venturing into explicit nudity. Check it out, below.
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