Perfume Genius – aka Mike Hadreas – has announced a new album, ‘Ugly Season’.
To coincide with the new record, Hadreas has teamed with visual artist Jacolby Satterwhite for an upcoming short film.
Satterwhite, who directed the visual to Solange’s ‘When I Get Home’, is known for his immersive multidisciplinary technique that fuses live video, 3-D animation, drawing and print-making. His work has appeared at MoMa, The Smithsonian, The Whitney and the Studio Museum of Harlem.
“This project is the genesis of a whole new direction that I’m taking, one that I’ve been thinking about within this endemic culture, since 2020,” says Satterwhite. “Mike and I are both writing scripts. My visual narrative serendipitously mirrors the lyrical direction in his music; it’s a rare, like-minded bond. It’s a creation myth. How do you architecturally mold and render an idealized version of utopia? It’s about making something that you desire so beyond your scope that it’s hard to grapple into a concrete form.”
The music of ‘Ugly Season’ was written to accompany immersive dance piece ‘The Sun Still Burns Here’, created by Perfume Genius and choreographer Kate Wallich, which was performed in Seattle, Minneapolis, New York City and Boston throughout 2019.
Perfume Genius has already shared two compositions from the piece, ‘Pop Song’ and ‘Eye in the Wall’. The album showcases the entirety of the project, produced by Perfume Genius and GRAMMY-winning producer and long-time collaborator Blake Mills and created in collaboration with Hadreas’ long-time partner Alan Wyffels.
The tracklisting reads:
- Just a Room
- Herem
- Teeth
- Pop Song
- Scherzo
- Ugly Season
- Eye in the Wall
- Photograph
- Hellbent
- Cenote
