Without a doubt, ANOHNI’s 2016 album HOPELESSNESS was one of the best and most talked-about records to be released, ending up on damn-near everyone’s end of the year lists for music in 2016 for its infusion of protest anthems into the electronic/dance genre.
But that clearly wasn’t enough for ANOHNI, who is set keep the momentum going with the release of her new EP, PARADISE. The new EP will see the return of HOPELESSNESS collaborators Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never, who helped craft and shape the overall sound of the record, which ANOHNI will continue with this new project and on the new title-track.
On “Paradise,” ANOHNI sings of a dystopia, of “mis-shifting beauty,” where she is “here…not here, as a point of consciousness,” over squeaking and screeching synths (courtesy of Hudson Mohawke) in her iconic voice.
Anger and frustration permeate the new project, as ANOHNI rage against the powers that be (“Jesus Will Kill You”), at complicity as a mother (“You Are My Enemy”), the ever-growing lack of biodiversity (“She Doesn’t Mourn Her Loss”) and a range of other topics that are pressing to our culture, our nation, and our planet during increasingly divided times. The new EP aims to serve somewhat as a call to action for women, a sentiment shared in a statement from the artist where she calls for an “intervention by women around the world,” to save the world from its problems.
You can check out the new track, along with the full tracklist and artist statement below, and keep an eye out for the EP to drop on March 17 via Secretly Canadian and Rough Trade.
PARADISE
1. In My Dreams
2. Paradise
3. Jesus Will Kill You
4. You Are My Enemy
5. Ricochet
6. She Doesn’t Mourn Her Loss
ARTIST STATEMENT
My Mother’s Love
Her gentle touch
My Father’s Hands
Rest on my Throat
“Our new leaders hope to crush our spirits and expedite ecocide in the name of virulent progress, consumerism and false security.
Like Jihadis, many capitalists and Christians compulsively seek to facilitate a righteous “holy war”, or apocalypse.
For millennia, Men have enslaved women and attempted to appropriate female creative power, re-casting themselves as gods and creators.
This assault continues today in the forms of ruthless wealth and mineral extraction, genetic engineering, mass surveillance and war mongering.
But as Donald Trump and his cabinet now demonstrate, the skills encouraged in men by their biologies and the tools that boys master in the playground have not equipped them to deal with the unprecedented global crisis we are now facing.
Mothers, your sons are trapped in a nightmare; they are not capable of responsibly negotiating the destructive agency that they now wield.
More profound even than a crime against humanity, fathers and sons now compulsively prepare to commit ecocide, in a final and irreversible assault upon creation itself.
Only an intervention by women around the world, with their innate knowledge of interdependency, deep listening, empathy and self-sacrifice, could possibly alter our species’ desperate course.”
– ANOHNI, January 2017
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