A degree of cringing tends to happen whenever an artist gets overtly political, but absent the personal anecdotes that give an authentic humanity to the policies quietly imposed in detached government offices, where would we be when it comes to our collective desire to effect change? ANOHNI spoke as a global citizen via last year’s debut album HOPELESSNESS (also one of our favorite releases from that year), and in so doing, she gave desperately-sung attention to issues ranging from the rising prevalence of drone warfare to environmental degradation caused by the perpetual advance of human industry. You get the impression from listening to the album that there isn’t a limit to the issues on which ANOHNI is both willing and wanting to comment, and seemingly right on cue, a companion EP to HOPELESSNESS, titled PARADISE, has just been announced for release on March 17 via Secretly Canadian/Rough Trade.
Both the album cover and a preliminary statement from ANOHNI (readable below) attest to strong beliefs concerning feminism and male hegemony. Other aspects of the EP center around capitalist ideologues and their proposed mental equivalence with religious fanatics, plus the significance of a healthy, if not totally uncorrupted, global ecosystem. *Exhales intensely*
Here’s where you can pre-order PARADISE. Listen to the title track after the aforementioned artist statement:
Her gentle touch
My Father’s Hands
Rest on my ThroatOur 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.
PARADISE tracklisting:
01. In My Dreams
02. Paradise
03. Jesus Will Kill You
04. You Are My Enemy
05. Ricochet
06. She Doesn’t Mourn Her Loss
More about: Anohni, Antony and the Johnsons, Hudson Mohawke, Oneohtrix Point Never
