Art d'Ecco Shares 'How Real Is Real?' From SCHEELE'S GREEN LP

Vancouver's Art d'Ecco has shared his new single 'How Real Is Real?' off his fifth album Scheele's Green, due out October 23rd via Paper Bag Records. Over a churning garage-rock riff, the anti-war protest song grapples with ICE raids, the genocide in Gaza, and Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Art reflects:

'We've been mediated by images. Our entire reality is no longer shared, but rather it is perceived individually via social media and a life spent being terminally online. This new society experiences a simulacrum of reality, one that is shaped with bias and that is force-fed into us from an outside world that is owned and operated by tech oligarchs and governments competing in zero-sum battles for global hegemony.

'How Real Is Real' serves as a clarion call–our new realities have desensitized us to the real life atrocities and injustices that are actually being experienced by people in our communities around the world. The idea that we've never been more connected to fast, unlimited, free information but are still completely separated from reality and truth is a paradox of our own making.

The song was inspired by Guy Debord's The Society of The Spectacle, a prophetic book written by the French philosopher and filmmaker about an eerily similar decline of society nearly 60 years ago. 'How Real Is Real' describes this crazy world around us and the dull numbing effect it seems to have on everyone watching it from the comfort of their warm bed, wrapt in the addiction of a perpetual doom scroll.'

'How Real Is Real' follows the fiery 'The Death of Indie,' which earned praise and support from FLOOD Magazine, CREEM, Exclaim!, The Line of Best Fit, and Northern Transmissions, among others, and its riotous follow-up 'Disappear Here.'

Scheele's Green is named for an actual color, first synthesized by Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1775. With the shade previously hard to attain, Scheele's green quickly became a status symbol for the wealthy, who covered their homes and bodies in it. Just as quickly, they became afflicted with strange ailments thanks to the arsenic compounds needed for the color. Scheele's green soon became identified as a dangerous luxury the affluent were nevertheless reluctant to quit. 'It created this literally toxic society,' Art describes. 'This addiction, this allure, was such a rich narrative vein, the same way we can't look away from our obsession with social media or other technological shifts that might harm us as much as help us. We want these things that make us look hot and give us status but it's all a mirage. What if humans are just intrinsically drawn to s that fing kills us?'

Across Scheele's Green, Art lets it all pour out–sometimes angry, sometimes disenchanted, sometimes poignant, sometimes funny. In earlier days, his makeup and wigs served as a shield for more personal exorcisms, but across his first four albums he's been gradually peeling back stylistic artifice and layer. Now fully exposed and bare, Art wanted to write differently, to connect with everyone else and capture our collective fear of the future.

In the last few years, Art assembled a mix of young music educators and jazz aficionados based in the Vancouver area as his core band: Junny Chen (guitar), Olivier Leclerc (bass), Hayden Cohen (organ/synth), Kyler Young (saxophone), Yato Noukoussi (drums). The group brought a different energy to Art's compositions, and unlocked a whole new potential. Together with co-producer Eric Shea at Vancouver's hallowed HippoSonic studio, they hunkered down for two months, achieving a gritty, downtown blend of art-rock and post-punk, played live in the room with both fervor and precision. Partially inspired by the experimentation of Miles Davis' free jazz era, they embarked on jams that led to bold, untethered arrangements. For all its raw rock 'n' roll, Scheele's Green also incorporated alien sounds and instruments, including tubular bells and a three-hundred-year-old harpsichord.

Scheele's Green ultimately finds Art reimagining the DNA and scope of his work, returning to us raw and human and with a collection of music more violent and urgent than anything he's ever recorded: 'I just wanted to deliver these feelings full-fing-throated for the first time. It's an attitude reinvention,' he says.

Photo Credit: Izzy Kazanbroot Guppy