Art Pop Gets Redefined with Anomie Belle’s ‘Flux’

August 27, 2016

“You know you’ll never have to look back now,” sings Anomie Belle on the hopeful opening of her latest release ‘Flux’. Across multiple EPs and now three full-lengths, the versatile multi-instrumentalist hasn’t been afraid to get eclectic or outré as she explores concepts of identity and alienation. She is who she is. True to the album’s title, Belle and her collaborators (among them opera singer Roxanna Walitzki and artist Marco Mazzoni) have crafted a rich slice of art pop that moves fluidly across its twelve tracks between classical composition, soul, and electronica, often within the same song.

It’s an admirable balancing act. The early energetic beats of “Right Way” and “As We Are” smoothly transmute into the distorted sonic collage of the album’s centerpiece “Lovers,” in which Belle sensuously pants and exhales as she pontificates on the hollowness of consumerist values. Later, she decelerates for the quieter, contemplative “Good Life.” Occasionally lyrically spare, the album remains compositionally dense and transporting throughout.

“For all that you want it/you feel like you’re on your own” closes the album. Confronted with an artistic voice so singular, Flux is an aural landscape worth spending some alone time in.

Beautiful.bizarre is proud to premiere the track “As Summer Bleeds Daylight”

Flux was conceived as a multimedia project involving international visual artists and has been complemented by a 32-page art book (included with the album) and companion exhibition that opened earlier this month at San Francisco’s Modern Eden Gallery. Each of these pieces are portraits of Belle that represent the themes that form the bones of her music. The full lineup of artists includes Marco Mazzoni, Redd Walitzki, Mark Demsteader, Kari-Lise Alexander, Casey Weldon, Meredith Marsone, Alessandra Maria, Alex Garant, Alpay Efe, Januz Miralles, Maria Teicher, Antonio Velfin, Alexandra Becker-Black and Zin Lim.