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Quietism
ReleaseProduct
Quietism
Artist
Momus
Label
American Patchwork
Catalogue Number
AMPATCH034
Release Date
March 28, 2025

The 37th Momus album started as a pre-election warning against the 47th US President in the form of a song called Orange Pills ("don't swallow them" being the take-away). Somehow the American electorate failed to listen and elected Trump anyway. The issue, for non-MAGA people, then became where to position oneself on a spectrum running from quietism to activism. It's a theme which bounces through Quietism, a quiet yet poppy album focused on the sound of a real acoustic guitar (the machine which "kills fascists", as Woody Guthrie liked to say). One might want to reduce the idiotic noise of this world, to retreat into a privileged world of beauty and intelligence, to become an introvert or a recluse. But politics cannot be denied, even by a Paris-based aesthete. In a new take on the old cliché: "First they came for the quietists and I said nothing…" One tiny piece of aesthetic activism going on here is the choice of a South American musical idiom: 1960s bossa nova, partly generated by 2020s AI tools which are North American. A secondary theme — very much related to the use of AI — is mimicry, and the dialectical tug between authenticity and the synthetic, human input and the impact of robotics. What's real, what's fake, and which of those — the mask or the supposed face beneath — gets us to a more interesting place? A filmic vocabulary appears: there are continuity girls, spoiler alerts, actors whose props win Academy Awards. At the end the album presents its human author with an imaginary medal, for this is his "imperial phase" — a double-edged sword representing both his own artistic zenith and a period in which the world is dominated by new empires, old oligarchs.

Digital Tracklist

  1. 1 01 The Actor 3:56 Buy

    01 The Actor

  2. 2 02 Orange Pills 2:56 Buy

    02 Orange Pills

  3. 3 03 Continuity Girl 3:57 Buy

    03 Continuity Girl

  4. 4 04 Love Yourself 3:26 Buy

    04 Love Yourself

  5. 5 05 30,000 Nights 3:44 Buy

    05 30,000 Nights

  6. 6 06 My Apprentice Devil 4:23 Buy

    06 My Apprentice Devil

  7. 7 07 Spoiler Alert 4:29 Buy

    07 Spoiler Alert

  8. 8 08 The Quietist 4:09 Buy

    08 The Quietist

  9. 9 09 Noise Reduction 4:01 Buy

    09 Noise Reduction

  10. 10 10 Trauma Bingo 4:13 Buy

    10 Trauma Bingo

  11. 11 11 The Butcher's Beautiful Wife 3:43 Buy

    11 The Butcher's Beautiful Wife

  12. 12 12 Life With Eno 3:29 Buy

    12 Life With Eno

  13. 13 13 Impostor Syndrome 4:16 Buy

    13 Impostor Syndrome

  14. 14 14 Imperial Phase 4:45 Buy

    14 Imperial Phase

Momus

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