Usher has revealed that a track from his upcoming album – the rumoured name of which I grappled with for about a minute – ‘The Shanertance‘, was produced by painted-face electro-acoustic-pop auteurs, Empire Of The Sun.
The track, ‘Looking For Myself‘, came after he saw Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore perform at Coachella. Speaking with NME, Usher said “[Empire of the Sun] man what an incredible sound, there was something just fresh about. And when we started working on ‘Looking For Myself,’ in fact the week that I wrote and produced the record, it was right after we’d come back from Coachella. And having gone to Coachella in California, it really kind of gave us an opportunity to have a restart, because that was certainly a different experience for me.”
“I said, ‘I love the feeling that we have here and the different styles of music, let’s find a way to make an album that works everywhere, that works here, works for my fans, works for the classic audience, works for my pop audience, and that’s why you feel you’re hearing this eclectic mixture of music’.”
Working with EOTS marks another eclectic artistic departure for Indie Usher, who recently collaborated with Diplo on the Valentine’s Day-released track ‘Climax‘.
On top of Nick Littlemore’s side project with Pnau remixing Elton John’s back catalog (Elton vs Pnau), Luke Steele previously worked with Jay-Z on The Blueprint for the track ‘What We Talkin’ Bout?‘ and the duo’s two ubiquitous singles ‘We Are The People‘ and ‘Standing On The Shore‘ also appeared on HBO’s Entourage during the bromedy’s swansong season.
There’s a whole lot of international lurve for the Empirical duo up in here. Oh yeah. Peace up, A town.
