We by ba:zel

~ We: me, you, everybody.
Every body…
Lyrics like the omnipresent manifest reflecting nowadays world.
And setting a mirror to its twisted western values…
The public call, an appeal to self-criticism and awareness… ~

Duo consists of the visual artist Dan Vlček and his wife Ewelina Vlček Chiu - also a solo musician recording and performing under alias Ai Fen - both playing in their own projects and bands as well.
Album “We” is finding this couple in the times of a strangest combination - during the period of an unrelenting circumstances and lockdown - while preparing themselves for the firstborn child, and in a pandemic years. It caused them to rework the material heavily, scraping and reshaping it again a few times. That resulted in their song structured and orientated witchy art-pop, darkwave electronica with the strong emphasis on lyrics, to be enhanced with hyper-pop glimpses, and spare instrumental appearances such as from collaborator, Montreal based artist Adrian Copeland. They previously recorded a track with his solo “doom” cello project Alder and Ash, about mass industry and consequences, gluttony, greed and privilege. And all proceeds from sales of the single goes to a non-profit organization, like good engaged art should do.

Ba:zel are saying it the most aptly:
This second full length release is the culmination of intense creative exploration, introspection and fine-tuning in the last six years, an album written in response to fury, a rage toward helplessness, domination, plain old stupidity and lack of care. Over the course of nine tracks, “We” glares at the state of our world while looking toward the future with surreal, oddly detached terror. After all, we are living in an age of distance and paralysis. The horrors of Earth are close, instantly knowable, yet seen through a patina of social media and dubious journalism. Housing is unaffordable, our cities are overrun with careless tourists living in a flats just for short-term rentals, the lungs of our planet are burning, we take up land and use up precious water to raise animals to satisfy a greed for flesh while tossing tons of food as most of the humankind lives in starvation. Our society is paranoid, skeptical and pessimistic and it imprints itself on us to some degree however hard we may resist. This is a response to that and an attempt to shrug it off, emerging smooth and hopeful.

Their artistic statement:
The tracks were created over the course of 2017-2019 and the album was set to publish in the autumn of 2020. When the pandemic hit all our plans for the release went awry. During lockdown we took a magnifying glass to the finished material and thought it could be better. We set off on polishing it, recording new vocals, fine-tuning the sound design, adding, subtracting. By the time we had finished we were in a different mindset completely than when we had begun writing, and in the initial false utopia signaling of the global pandemic (Dolphins returning to the Venice canals! Decreases in coal consumption! Falling CO2 levels!) it seemed the issues we had funneled our rage against were no longer relevant. Yet as the haze lifts, we see that they are more present than ever and ever more urgent to address. The world is still burning.

ONE WORLD - FOR SELF-RESTRAINT AND TEMPERANCE, SELF-REGULATION AND DECENTRALISATION, EMPATHY AND SENSITIVENESS, AGAINST CONSUMPTION AND NARROWMINDNESS
...

👽 Label of 23 & PLUR: Peace Love Unity Respect

Audiovisual eclecticism

iniciated and curated by iob

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