Bleep

Harrison Rodrigues, the Portuguese New Yorker, London raised, 2x Platinum producer known as Baauer has announced his sophomore LP Planet’s Mad for June 5th via LuckyMe. Whereas in the past Baauer has focused on collaboration with some of the biggest names across genres (Jay-Z, Missy Elliot, Elle Fanning. Jennifer Lawrence, Skepta, AJ Tracey, Lil Miquela, etc…) it’s with Planet’s Mad that he comes back to pure self-expression. An album rooted in the crossover dance acts he grew up listening to a la Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers, Basement Jaxx and Daft Punk, cut with modern hip hop and pop, this album encompasses the digital culture we live within and is an album that is 100% Baauer. Conceived within a movie-like plot of a new world appearing above Earth, a vision executed in the new video, Planet’s Mad takes us through countless micro-genres where we’re exposed to the sound of alien creatures, children, news forecasts, burps and cosmic atmospherics - all whipped up into this uniquely maximalist dance record.

Today, on the powerful second single, AETHER, sets a heroic childrens choir gliding over exploding sampled breakbeats and a moshpit erupting drop. Vocal FX burst throughout: haunted hooks echoing across the alien landscape. A truncated pitched-up phrase “so beautiful!” pops through the mix before being whipped back into a tide of rolling bass and clattering drums. Alongside AETHER is accompanied by b-side YEHOO - a mutated reggaeton track co-produced by fellow Portugese producer Holly, created from molten tropical bird song. Yehoo builds out the sonic world Baauer has created for the album. Baauer tops New Music Daily on Apple Music today.

The first single “PLANET’S MAD” released last month - begins the story of the album with a visual directed by Directed by Actual Objects (Rick Farin & Claire Cochran) . Built within the Unreal games engine, the video showed Baauer at home in his apartment, while news of the planet rung out across tv stations. He took to the streets amidst the panic. We got a glimpse of the cast of weird and wonderful creatures that occupy the planet. In “AETHER” the two planet’s collide and alien’s spill over into Earth, attending what looks like the best gig of all time while we take a fly-by tour of the world Baauer’s been dreaming about.