Art d'Ecco to Release Fifth LP SCHEELE'S GREEN, Shares THE DEATH OF INDIE

Art d'Ecco has announced SCHEELE'S GREEN, his fifth studio album, set for release via Paper Bag Records. The Vancouver artist shared the seven-minute opening track and video THE DEATH OF INDIE, a song aimed at tech industry figures including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman.

Scheele's Green will be released on October 23rd, 2026 via Paper Bag Records. Its opener, 'The Death of Indie,' is accompanied by a video directed by Loken Charon. The song serves as a call to arms against tech oligarchs enriching themselves from the world's demise, with warnings about AI data centers and abandoned movie theaters full of rats.

'It's the sound of fear and anxiety–about AI, and the disruption and uncertainty that this technology has triggered as it infiltrates just about every facet of our daily lives, including the arts,' Art explains. 'It's a song that confronts the gaslighting we're all collectively experiencing at the hands of these technocratic psychos and CEOs who are in it for only themselves and their stakeholders–even if it means annihilating their constituents, plundering the earth's resources beyond repair, and destroying society writ large.'

Of the video, he quips, 'Despite our philosophical differences, acquiring our Four Horsemen CEOs (Zuck, Bozo, Dips, and Altright) for this video took some convincing. I get it, they're rich, and they're busy. But after weeks of negotiating, our production team was able to assuage their concerns and get them to pull up and do what they do best: DANCE.'

Scheele's Green is now available for pre-order at ffm.to/artdecco_scheelesgreen.

In the ten years since he first adopted his musical nom de guerre, Art has already been many versions of himself: an elusive art-pop architect, a canny glam rocker, most recently a louche poet ambling the streets of New York deep into the night on last year's Serene Demon. But this time, Art questioned the whole endeavor of making art in the face of an impending doom promised by a seemingly never-ending onslaught of contemporary societal ills. He sought to burn it all down. The result is Scheele's Green, a fiery reckoning with the world around us and the crucible in which Art d'Ecco dies to be reborn again. 'I want people to hear this album and say, 'That's Art d'Ecco??'' he proclaims.

For Scheele's Green, the malaise and disorientation he felt in an era plagued by technocratic billionaires rising up like Bond villains sent him down a historical rabbithole tracing generations of self-destructive human behavior. The album 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. He bills Scheele's Green as a state of the union, rallying against AI and technocracy, yes, but also climate collapse, and the military industrial complex, and, well, everything else.

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 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. Nothing quite turned out the way Art expected when he first arrived bright-eyed in Vancouver over 20 years ago, and nothing quite turned out the way many of us would've hoped as we entered a new century. Scheele's Green offers no easy answers–or rather, doesn't pretend to know how to counter the world we received in any way besides the loud, real interaction of human beings making music together anyway.

Tracklist

1. The Death of Indie

2. Like Trilby

3. Catch 22

4. How Real is Real?

5. The Wolf

6. Scheele's Green

7. Disappear Here

8. Break & Enter

9. Beware of Dog

10. Darién Gap

11. Endings for Beginners

FLOOD Magazine, which premiered the single, described d'Ecco's work as trading anti-big-tech commentary with saxophone solos and other instrumental flourishes.

Photo Credit: Izzy Kazanbroot Guppy

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