Today, artist, producer, DJ and cultural trailblazer Peggy Gou announces details of her long-awaited debut album. One of the most hotly-anticipated debut records in recent years, I Hear You will be released on 7th June 2024 via XL Recordings. The ten track album is the culmination of years of work for the Korean-born artist, who’s uniquely revered as both an underground icon and global sensation, sticking by her own unwavering vision to become one of the most in-demand electronic music artists and DJs in the world. Featuring previous singles, the 2023 chart-topping global hit “(It Goes Like) Nanana” and her Lenny Kravitz collaboration “I Believe in Love Again”, the LP sees Gou stepping into the next level of her artistry and boldly claiming her voice through the kaleidoscopic lens of ‘90s house music.
Talking about I Hear You, Peggy Gou says:
“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 news of the album, Peggy Gou today releases a new single “1+1=11”, a festival-sized anthem that signifies “togetherness” and is set to unify dancefloors around the world. “1+1=11” is accompanied by the first-ever music video from acclaimed Icelandic-Danish artist, and Gou’s longtime friend, Olafur Eliasson. The video is directed by and stars Eliasson, whose globally-renowned work – including The weather project (2003), The New York City Waterfalls (2008) and Ice Watch (2014) – has often been inspired by natural systems, embodied experience and also movement, a disciplines he fell in love with as a teenage breakdancer. The video was premiered in Berlin last night at a party hosted by Gou, featuring a personally-curated DJ line up that included Spray, fka.m4a, and Matrefakt.
Speaking about the “1+1=11” video, 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 realise 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 artwork features Gou wearing the artwork Psychoacoustic empathy amp (2023) – a “ring of ears” created by Eliasson. Meanwhile, on the futuristic call-to-arms album opener “Your Art”, Gou recites her own edit of Eliasson’s “Your planet seen from within” poem, written to accompany his 2022 TIME magazine cover story. Elsewhere, a second vocal collaboration comes courtesy of Puerto Rican rap sensation Villano Antillano while Gou, the album’s main performer, writer, producer and mixer, lends her own signature vocals throughout it all. The result is an album that cements Peggy Gou’s position as a true cultural pioneer, at once nostalgic yet electrifyingly forward thinking.
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Meanwhile, 2024 is set to be a huge year in the live arena for Peggy Gou. Having played to over a million people in 2023, she already has high-profile appearances lined up at the likes of the Glastonbury, Coachella and Primavera festivals alongside her biggest headline show to date, at London’s Gunnersbury Park, on 17th August. For full details head to https://peggygou.com/tour