Known in human form as Neshma Friend, Micropixie is the alien alter-ego and creative persona through which Friend’s voice finds its muse. She’ll be releasing her new album Dark Sight of the Moon in March 2019. Made with award-winning producer Paco Serén of Los Piratas in Galicia, Spain, and featuiring contributions from Rob Myers and Ashish “Hash” Vyas of Thievery Corporation, the record layers psych-pop instrumentation over Micropixie’s melodically deadpan vocals to create a hypnotic mix that she calls “Tripadelica”.
Dark Sight of the Moon is intergalactic in scope, international in outlook, and highly personal in its invitation to the listener to step into Micropixie’s uncannily enticing world. The new record is the last chapter in a narratively linked trilogy of records alongside The Good, The Beige & The Ugly (2012), and Alice In Stevie Wonderland (2005). The triptych of albums tells the story of Micropixie’s journey to earth and her conflicted search for her true identity among humans. This sci-fi journey parallels Friend’s personal reflections on her own real-world background and international heritage. Friend summarizes this complex interweaving of fact, fiction, and cultural politics in her animated short, “50 Shades of Beige”.
Today Glide is excited to premiere the new video for “New Year’s Day”, a song that exudes a neo-noir vibe reminiscent of Portishead, Massive Attack and MIA, articulated through Micropixie’s charmingly off-kilter worldview. With a heavy yet airy beat to balance Micropixie’s psych-pop vocals, the song seems to tell the story of an alien being who comes to earth and decides to stay because she wants to fix the turmoil of the world. The song takes a high-concept approach to offering commentary on a world that is torn by injustice, violence and war, and financial misdoings. The title of the song makes it aptly timed to come when most of us are thinking real hard about how we can fix the world, or at the very least fix ourselves, and it feels strangely optimistic.
Micropixie shares her own story behind the song and its video:
“My ‘New Year’s Day’ video explores themes of socioeconomic inequality, xenophobia and patriarchal oppression through the story of two brown women: one is free to walk around the world, and the other, seemingly confined to her living room. I felt that by juxtaposing the webcam-like antics of the ‘Insider’ with the playful behaviour of the ‘Outsider’, the viewer might ponder the relationship between the two characters. Are they different representations of the same persona in time? Or is one of them dreaming the other? Also, since the primary motif within my third album — ‘Dark Sight of the Moon’ — pertains to vision, watching, and seeing things as they really are, I invite the viewer to question who is observing whom here.”
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