A few days ago, Grimes deleted everything on her Instagram account, which has become a near-universal sign that a musician has something new coming out. Sure enough, she has been teasing something new with cryptic messages like, “A new way to die,” and, “There were Humans and Gods and nothing but Angels in between.” This morning, she has shared a video for a collaboration with producer i_o called “Violence.”
The clip begins with Grimes reading the ancient Chinese military text The Art Of War, and from there goes on to feature her and some dancers performing war-inspired choreography in front of marble columns. As for the song, it’s an engaging piece of atmospheric but dance-ready electronic pop, not so far removed from the style of Grimes’ previous work.
Grimes previously described her upcoming album, Miss_Anthropocene, as “a concept album about the anthropomorphic Goddess of climate Change: A psychedelic, space-dwelling demon/ beauty-Queen who relishes the end of the world.” In a recent interview, Grimes said that Miss_Anthropocene could be her last album, saying, “I’ll never sign with another label. I’ll never have to put out another album… If I didn’t have this whole requirement to release an ‘album,’ I would have just dropped a bunch of music ages ago. […] I feel like I would work better in like EP-ish formats.” She also said she’s not a fan of performing live: “I wanna retire from touring. […] I wanna do a hologram tour. Why do we keep doing them for dead artists instead of living ones who have stage fright?”
Watch the video for “Violence” above.
