Chet Faker took to social media yesterday to announce that he’s preparing to drop brand new music “in the next few days”. However, fans are more concerned about the fact that the Hottest 100-topping artist has shaved off his beard.

As triple j reports, Faker popped on Instagram yesterday afternoon to tease a forthcoming collaboration with buddy Marcus Marr, a UK producer who’s part of the esteemed DFA stable and had an underground hit in funky single ‘The Music’.

Whilst the promise of new music from the producer and noted Vine savant got plenty of fans excited, most of them simply couldn’t get over Faker’s lack of face fuzz, prompting them to ask en masse – “Hey, what happened to the beard?”

Twitter is basically in the middle of a collective conniption, with some fans even questioning whether or not they will be able to enjoy new Chet Faker music knowing it was crafted by some clean-shaven dude who kinda sorta looks like Chet Faker.

Faker himself, meanwhile, is likely too busy to worry about the nation he’s left in mourning. He’s prepping the biggest Aussie tour of his career and has been holed up in a Brooklyn studio working on the follow-up to his debut album.

According to triple j, the producer and singer’s sequel to the runaway success that was Built On Glass will “force journalists to use adjectives outside the word ‘chilled’ and ‘crooner’ and ‘bearded’ and all that shit they’ve been running with”.

Image via Chet Faker Facebook

Faker’s been pretty active on the collab front lately. In addition to teaming up with Marr, he recently unveiled a new version of ‘1998’ featuring BANKS, and he recently linked up with Melbourne’s The Cactus Channel for a couple of very funky tracks.

Earlier in the year, the ‘Talk Is Cheap’ hit-maker also revealed that he’d been hanging with Nordic hero Todd Terje, had recorded with German pianist Nils Frahm, and spent some time recording with Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Ruban Nielson.

As we await these assuredly epic collaborations, you can check out the fallout from #BeardGate2015 below.

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