Perfume Genius has confirmed details of his new album Ugly Season, to be released via Matador Records on June 17th. To coincide with the album release, Perfume Genius has joined forces with visual artist Jacolby Satterwhite for a short film featuring tracks from the album. Satterwhite is renowned for his multidisciplinary techniques that incorperates live video, 3-D animation, drawings and print-making; he has previously worked with Solange on ‘When I Get Home’.
Satterwhite shared more about the collaboration “Mike Hadreas (Perfume Genius) 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.
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The music for Ugly Season was written to provide the soundtrack for Perfume Genius and choreographer Kate Wallich’s immersive dance piece, The Sun Still Burns Here. The work was commissioned during 2019 by the Seattle Theatre Group and Mass MoCA and during this time, Perfume Genius shared two of the project’s compositions as a taster of what was to come – ‘Pop Song’ and ‘Eye in the Wall’.
Like many, the project was put on the backburner due to various Covid lockdowns. The rest of the album was recorded in the intervening period and the entirety of the project’s music can be heard in Ugly Season. The album was produced by Perfume Genius and GRAMMY-winning producer and long-time collaborator Blake Mills and was created in collaboration with Hadreas’ long-time partner Alan Wyffels.
Ugly Season Tracklist:
1) Just a Room
2) Herem
3) Teeth
4) Pop Song
5) Scherzo
6) Ugly Season
7) Eye in the Wall
8) Photograph
9) Hellbent
10) Cenote
Photo: Bryan Ling
