“I think that any particularly salient emotion – by emotion I don’t necessarily [mean] as primary emotion, it could be something as simple as ambition – you do need that as some sort of engine, or maybe fuel is the better analogy,” he says on whether the album’s title was in fact a motivating artistic force. “I do think that anybody who decides what they want to dedicate their life to doing needs that massive amount of motivation. I think for this particular record, anxiety was the fuel I was able to parlay into making the music. I think there are plenty of people with severe anxiety that can be crippled by it as well, so it’s not necessarily in of itself a creative tool. It’s one of a plethora of options to motivate yourself to do something.”
Anxiety’s cover art was originally set to feature Munch’s iconic painting The Scream, but come release time, the artwork featured an empty frame instead. “It was primarily a European copyright issue, although I actually do prefer it aesthetically without The Scream. I think it articulates the idea at least as well without the actual image in the frame. But the notion and inspiration for the cover art as it tied in to the title and theme of the record was quite tongue-in-cheek. The AP [Associate Press] had an image, that was almost identical, of two art handlers presenting The Scream for sale at Sotheby’s; I believe it was then sold for $120 million [US]. It was the most expensive piece of art ever sold, although it was just trumped by the Lucian Freud triptych,” he says, referring to the $153 million price tag of Francis Bacon’s Three Studies Of Lucian Freud that went under the hammer mere hours before our interview.
“The idea was to take what is effectively an antiquated trope image of existential anxiety developed in the 20th century, and place it in a more anxiety-provoking framework of market capitalism, and the relationship between those things and art within the context of art as a product. That symbolic business card for what is ultimately its business, which is business itself. It also ties into the way I make music, which is to take extremely popular notions of music – top 40 pop and R&B – and attempt to reframe that and work against these tropes, while ratifying them simultaneously. It’s all part of the same picture.”
Achieving a pristine sonic quality that wasn’t necessarily present on previous releases, Ashin teamed up with peers Daniel Lopatin and Joel Ford on production duties, plus an ace in the hole engineer to achieve that conflict with the aforementioned pop tropes.
“Al Carlson [engineer] was the secret element, he engineered and mixed the Ford & Lopatin record as well as Replica, which is Dan’s [Oneohtrix Point Never] previous solo record, and he did a lot of work at Mexican Summer studios. The way that’s configured is that there is an office, a brains trust upstairs, then the whole downstairs is dedicated to a large A-room with a huge library with 20-foot ceilings, then a smaller B-room for mixing. That’s kind of like the home of the sound. Tracking and recording with the intention of clarity goes a huge way towards that. But also Al has that magic shimmer attached, he’s worked in more ancillary ways with Lady Gaga, that kind of pop music. In a lot of ways the key was striking the balance between finding that sound and also being inclined to push away from that into the avant garde. It was not hard, the recording sessions felt extremely natural, pleasant and easy.”
On the surface, Anxiety can be appreciated purely as a slick pop artefact. But also present within its layers are wry, enveloping aural touchstones to blur the barriers between established conventions and more forward-thinking ideas.
“I’m not into comedy, but I’m super into satire. In popular culture there is that conflation where satire often ends up being funny, that guffaw-funny satire. But for me satire is this incredible, classical narrative tool. I think it’s of the heart of avant garde practice in general. To me, the avant garde takes society as you see it and fucks with it, that punk rock attitude toward canonical norms. There’s an earnest appreciation for top 40 pop, but also the history of pop music as opposed to real rock’n’roll. One of the trademarks of pop music is how it innately synthesises a lot of trends into a package that’s palpable not because of its influence, but because of this sheen that’s superimposed on top of the influences. Pop has always experimented with bizarre ideas. Some of the most memorable songs have been from producers like The Neptunes and Timbaland, who actually do really fucking weird shit and are visionary in the way they don’t simply recreate what other people have done.”
BY LACHLAN KANONIUK
