“I don’t even know if I’m ready to process this year. The level of touring and kind of critical responses is immense compared to anything I’ve ever experienced before. It’s really kind of absurd and awesome and stressful and terrifying.”
Could one expect any other statement from a man who aptly entitled his incendiary sophomore release Anxiety? Of course not! That’s just Arthur Ashin, or more internationally recognised under the moniker Autre Ne Veut (AVN).
Tone Deaf caught Ashin in the midst of his off-season as he recharges from what has undoubtedly been the most intense period of his musical career. Amused at the sheer notion of “speaking to someone in the future from his living room”, the preconceived anxious aura built around Ashin appears at least cosmetically non-existent.
Still processing the insane previous months, Ashin exhales at the completion of Anxiety, an album that he achieved in 2012. “Weirdly enough, probably the biggest highlight for me was in 2012 when I finished this record. Not just to finish but to produce the whole thing, which was really incredible. Being able to have an opportunity to be in a fucking studio that I don’t have to pay for to actually spend two months entrenched in a space dedicated to creating something is really awesome!”
“The fact is that I have truly terrible stage fright. I can’t really talk to people before my sets”The Masters graduate electrified the industry with the release of Anxiety in February 2013. Heralded by fans and critics alike, Anxiety has charmed and championed the resurgence of RnB alongside the likes of The Weeknd and Frank Ocean.
The juxtaposition of eloquent articulation of such a sufferable mental disorder on top of a dancefloor of funk, RnB, and neo-soul has been the key to Ashin’s success. Splitting the lyrics from the record’s sound, Ashin tells of his creative process.
“Once I was in the studio, I wasn’t kind of concerned about whether the song was there, it was just all dedicated to sound design and a very exhaustingly meticulous production process. Most of the verses are very much a stream of consciousness, the design to primarily function as a kind of Rorschach test type of thing. I’m attempting to imbue enough sentiment in non-linguistic ways in the music.”
Exhaustion has not only existed for Ashin during the recording of Anxiety. The singer-songwriter spoke earlier this year with FACT TV, quoting “performance is an opportunity for you to bare yourself in a way that’s great and totally and utterly exhausting”.
Ashin bared no front on the resurface of such a question. With a casual shrug of the shoulders, he said, “The fact is that I have truly terrible stage fright. I can’t really talk to people before my sets. It used to be almost the entire day before I played a show. It’s totally nerve-racking for me before every single set. I either have to go for it 100% and just fully become this character that can be on the stage and do these things in front of people, or I’m just…a mess, like a Cat Power breakdown shit I don’t know.” The honest New Yorker then burst into laughter.
Ashin compared himself to an early touring friend hailing from Canada, Devon Welsh – who is one half of the brooding electric duo, Majical Cloudz. “I think we have a lot of similar ideas about personal honour and trying to be good, real human beings in an industry that tends to favour this sort of fallacy-building fantasy for the artist and for the audience. There’s sort of innate light of empathy between two of us as people.”
The two-piece supported Autre Ne Veut’s first tour of Anxiety around Northern America. “Devon is just so particular. I’ve never seen anyone who puts themselves on stage in the way that he does. Getting to see them perform day in and day out was really incredible.”
Selflessly further praising their work, “I love that record. I think it’s definitely top five for me for the year.”
Despite a crippling fear of taking to the stage, Ashin has dazzled a myriad of hearts across the globe and has featured at the revered Pitchfork Festival, the best kept secret of Poland’s OFF Festival, and, of course, SXSW. Early 2014 will see Ashin tick Australia off his never-ending list, appearing at the stellar Laneway Festival.
Having never been Down Under before, Ashin jibed, “My knowledge of Australia is limited to a handful of major documentaries and growing up on the Crocodile Dundee trilogy so…I’m assuming that’s not what this is going to be like,” before once again plunging into a fit of infectious laughter.
“My knowledge of Australia is limited to a handful of major documentaries and growing up on the Crocodile Dundee trilogy”However , he told a lie, having rather substantial knowledge of one emerging Australian dancefloor icon, Flume. “His album actually came out around the same time as my record did. I thought it was cool. I mean, I’m not a huge EDM person, which is to say I don’t know that much about it, so I don’t know how it ranks or where it exists in the market of that stuff, but it seemed cool.”
“Cool” must have been enough as Autre Ne Veut joined forces with hip-hop hero Ghostface Killah, taking the Sydney-siders beat and remixing ‘Space Cadet’.
“I’d never really worked before with other producers. I always produce my own stuff. It was really neat to explore, trying to take this instrumental that already exists. It’s straight ahead in a lot ways, and it kind of doesn’t swing as much, so I kind of tried to play with that. I threw my hook on the back beat a little bit so that it would create a more RnB feel for it.”
Autre Ne Veut ruefully had to cancel his remaining 2013 performances “due to circumstances beyond control” – shows that would have sent him back to the United Kingdom and Europe.
“My longest stretch of rest is now – now until Australia.”
Alluding to the suggestion of new material, he confirmed, “I’m just going to be writing a ton and then I’ll be back in the studio at the beginning of next year, and yeah, go on from there.”
Brisbane’s Laneway Festival will feature Autre Ne Veut’s first performance of 2014 as well as a string of sets under the Laneway banner, including two extra showpiece performances in both Sydney and Melbourne.
With such a blatant and daunting record name such as Anxiety, coupled with the knowledge of just how terrified this intrinsically tortured artist is, the sheer intrigue to witness this intelligent man perform is paramount. Autre Ne Veut is not act to be missed in 2014.
Read our review of Anxiety here
Autre Ne Veut Australian Tour 2014
Presented by Handsome Tours, supported by Triple R and FBi
Tuesday 4th February – Northcote Social Club, Melbourne
Wednesday 5th Feburary – Oxford Art Factory, Sydney
Tickets on sale now from www.handsometours.com
Also performing at:
Laneway 2014 Dates & Venues
Brisbane: Friday 31st January – RNA, Fortitude Valley
Melbourne: Saturday 1st February – Footscray Community Arts Centre/River’s Edge
Sydney: Sunday 2nd February – Sydney College Of The Arts, Rozelle
Adelaide: Friday 7th February – Harts Mill, Port Adelaide
Perth: Saturday 8th February – Esplanade Park and West End, Fremantle
Tickets and info at http://lanewayfestival.com/
