The album titled “I Hear You” will be released on June 7 via XL Recordings / Beggars. With previous singles including the global hit “(It Goes Like) Nanana” and her collaboration with Lenny Kravitz “I Believe in Love Again”, the album takes Gou to the next level of her artistry. Peggy Gou can be seen this summer at Lowlands Festival, Biddinghuizen.
Peggy Gou says about “I Hear You”: “I Hear You is more than just my debut album. It embodies countless hours of dedication in my journey to create something timeless, and is a testament to the power of listening, to ourselves and to each other.”
To celebrate the album’s announcement, Peggy Gou today releases a new single called “1+1=11,” a festival anthem that symbolizes “togetherness” and aims to unite dance floors around the world.
“1+1=11” is accompanied by the first-ever music video from acclaimed Icelandic-Danish artist and long-time friend of Gou, Olafur Eliasson. The video is directed by and starring Eliasson, whose globally renowned work – including The Weather Project (2003), The New York City Waterfalls (2008) and Ice Watch (2014) – is often inspired by natural systems and movement. The video premiered last night in Berlin at a party hosted by Gou, featuring a personally curated DJ lineup including Spray, fka.m4a and Matrefakt.
About the video of “1+1=11” Eliasson says: “Dance is transformative! It bends and reshapes our relationship with time and space. When I was a teenager, breakdancing changed my life. I was into popping, moving like a robot, and doing the electric boogie. Street dance enabled me to explore the space of my body in relation to the world around me. I came to realize that by moving, I could change space. I could change what I saw and what I sensed. And these experiences actually proved foundational for my later artistic work.
Sculpture and dance are both non-verbal languages. Sometimes in order to communicate, you simply have to move. That’s what happened when I first met Peggy. We were having lunch, talking about our shared interests in psychosonics, rhythm, and movement, and to show her the moves I was talking about, I stood up in the restaurant to dance. I was thrilled that she later asked me to dance on video for one of her upcoming releases and to develop the visual language for it. By bringing together dance – embodied exploration of space – with colourful shadows, lights, and mirrors, I was able to bring some of the key interests that have long shaped my art into an entirely new context. Working together has been rewarding and a lot of fun!”
The “1+1=11” video is one of three “I Hear You” collaborations between Gou and Eliasson. The striking album cover design shows Gou with the artwork Psychoacoustic empathy amp (2023) – a “ring of ears” created by Eliasson. Meanwhile, on the futuristic album opener “Your Art,” Gou recites her own arrangement of Eliasson’s poem “Your planet seen from within,” written to accompany his 2022 cover story for TIME Magazine.
Tracklist “I Hear You”
1. Your Art
2. Back To One
3. I Believe in Love Again (with Lenny Kravitz)
4. All That (feat. Villano Antillano)
5. (It Goes Like) Nanana
6. Lobster Telephone
7. Seoulsi Peggygou (서울시페기구)
8. I Go
9. Purple Horizon
10. 1+1=11
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