Perfume Genius (Mike Hadreas) with his new album, Ugly Season, and announced via a clip by artist and director Jacolby Satterwhite. The clip is taken from a short film featuring Hadreas and music from Ugly Season that is a visual companion to the project. Satterwhite is known for his immersive multidisciplinary technique that fuses live video, 3-D animation, drawing and print-making. His work has appeared at MoMa, The Smithsonian, The Whitney and the Studio Museum of Harlem.
The music of Ugly Season was written for Perfume Genius and choreographer Kate Wallich’s immersive dance piece, The Sun Still Burns Here. The work was commissioned by the Seattle Theatre Group and Mass MoCA and was performed via residencies in Seattle, Minneapolis, New York City and Boston throughout 2019. During this time, Perfume Genius shared two of the dance project’s compositions – ‘Pop Song’ and ‘Eye in the Wall’. “It’s the sound of dancefloor euphoria,” said Pitchfork. “The colour of lights flashing as you move through a crowd, the touch of skin damp and warm against everyone else’s.” Now the entirety of the project’s original music can be heard in Ugly Season. The album was produced by Perfume Genius and producer, and long-time collaborator Blake Mills, and was created in collaboration with Hadreas’ long-time partner Alan Wyffels.