Patti Yang has been raised on punk. Whether it be growing up on the road alongside her musician father, or being born into communist Poland, Yang has been reared on politically and socially charged sounds. Although ‘Anonymous Face’ shares electronic music in equal parts (working with Martina-Topley Bird), Patti Yang’s affinity to the oppressed has generated an unmistakable post-punk vibe.
“It’s a comment on the way we live in today’s world… how we spin the information flow, from private to public, sacred to trivial, important to junk, on so many levels,” Yang says of the track, hinting at her revolutionist attitudes. “What we choose to share and with whom, what is chosen for us to see, do we question it. And how this new way of living, absorbing and sharing is affecting us all.”
“We seemed to have stepped into an information overload era and it changed the way we communicate and behave,” Yang continues. “Predicaments, assumptions, prophecies, conspiracies, speculations, gossip, it’s all one and same, out in the open in one way or another. I think it messed people up which isn’t necessarily bad , but it’s a powerful process on a global scale.”
Adding visuals to her commentary on a world of oversharing, Patti Yang’s video for ‘Anonymous Face’ jumps between a claustrophobic bunker and historic footage of uprising. The bunker acting as a misused safe-haven from action.
“We shot it in an old bunker in East London,” Yang explains of the video. “The rest is archive footage from various uprising episodes all over the world. The times were different but I thought, sometimes it feels like an ol’ history repeating, the end result is always the same, we tend to run blind, get unhappy, forget what it’s all about, and then the pressure’s off.”
“And you know, we’re just having a good time, playing in the dark, hiding in some old bunker while it’s all kicking off around. The one observation that everyone I played it to had was: “this could be happening anytime, it just never gets old.” I relate to that.”
With that, Yang challenges apathy, earmarking ‘Anonymous Face’ as a call to action. It’s harrowing and immediate; a result of her punk heritage and her electronic influences.
Anonymous Face from pati yang on Vimeo.
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