User2222

‘Out of Body’ is AQNB’s fifth digital release of new music and visual works compiled by our London and Los Angeles-based team.

The compilation—with cover art by Margaret Haines—features artists found in AQNB’s orbit, whose contributions reflect a notion of sound and art in the aftermath. After enduring nearly two years of varying degrees of lockdown and myriad emergent crises, the world as we know it is unrecognisable. It’s a time of truthers and techno-mystics, where a massive gravitational shift has further weakened any shared notion of reality, already broken down by the hyperindividualism of the internet. It has led us down a path of aliens and astral projection, mass resignations and a collective dissociative fugue state. We’ve wandered out of the Age of Reason and into an Era of Enchantment.

Music by:
ANIMA
Helica
shushu
User2222 & ANDREW GOES TO HELL

Visual works by:
4fucksakebabes
Alexandra Koumantaki

Cover artwork by:
Margaret Haines

Acknowledgments:
Steph Kretowicz, AQNB editor
Jared Davis, AQNB associate editor
Matt Dell, AQNB music editor
Caroline Heron, AQNB managing editor

Isaac Treece, mastering

Shushu is releasing Sweet verses dying like roses via Genome 6.66 Mbp on June 18, with preview track ‘im not okay (User2222 remix)’ premiering today on AQNB. The eight-track record is the Paris-based artist’s appearances on High Heal and ISENGARD, reflecting a somber-romantic outlook on young adulthood, love, and homesickness.

Similar to the record’s first single, ‘Something You Don’t Need To Know’, User2222 transforms ‘im not okay’ into a subdued yet intimate rendition for the Chinese artist’s vocals to take center stage. The original’s Seether guitar samples and baile funk beats get swapped for rather reserved MIDI-piano and synth lines emphasizing Shushu’s lyrics. The line, “don’t look at me like the way you see through,” seeps through the reverberated AutoTune as the track takes on a particularly personal meaning.**

Shushu’s Sweet verses dying like roses is out via Genome 6.66 Mbp on June 18.

Andrew Goes to Hell & User2222 chat nightcore, Limewire & other early-2000s influences in support of AQNB’s ‘Out of Body’ compendium

“…And nothing’s the same.” AQNB’s Out of Body mini-compendium confronting art & music in the aftermath drops today, Oct 12

Out of Body: an AQNB music & art compendium

Shushu invites User2222 for a piano rendition of her somber post-club pop ‘im not okay’ on Genome 6.66 Mbp