Alexis Georgopoulos is back with his first Arp album in four years, titled New Pleasures and out July 15 via Mexican Summer. Where 2018's Zebra luxuriated in lush rainforest sounds, New Pleasures in firmly in the city. "That space between idea and reality, fact and fiction — which drives New Pleasures —is so often inhabited by commerce, which conjures our fantasies for us,” Georgopoulos says of the album's themes. “There we find desire. For connection, luxury, distinction. We think we're immune to its psychology because we're conscious of it, but in some ways, it drives everything."
The first single from New Pleasures is the title track, which takes early hip hop / electro beats and Miami Vice production and mixes them with proggy synths. It's terrific.You could imagine a music montage from a '80s movie set in New York City being set to this. That's sort of what you get with the "New Pleasures" video, which was directed with much style by Adinah Dancyger which tracks a few different NYers through a day, including some spontaneous choreography.
“My first impressions when listening to the song made me think about the life of a dollar in one given day and how a web of connections amongst people / New Yorkers can be formed through the act of transaction," says Dancyger. "It was cool to discuss this with Alexis as his angle for this video was leaning towards similar images of commerce. It was an opportunity to explore the plethora of relationships one has to 'things' despite the connotations with any given scenario. This piece doesn't seek to judge the inevitable relationship between people and commerce, but is rather an observation of how many spaces and tones this ubiquitous experience moves through in micro and macro ways. It was an ambitious goal to film in this many places with this many people, but the cast and crew pulled off little miracles left and right."
Watch the video, and check out New Pleasures' artwork and tracklist, below.
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New Pleasures: 1- The Peripheral 2 - New Pleasures 3 - Preset Gloss 4 - Sponge (for Miyake) 5 - Eniko 6 - i: /o 7 - Plaza 8 - Le Palace 9 - Traitor (Dub) 10 - Embassy Disco 11 - Cloud Storage
