About Moses Sumney:
Moses Sumney evades definition as an act of duty: technicolor videos and monochrome clothes; Art Rock and Black Classical; blowing into Fashion Week from a small North Carolina town; infinite collaborators (Thundercat, Sufjan Stevens, Solange, James Blake), but only one, staggering voice; a young life spent betwixt Southern California and Accra, Ghana.
Sumney’s studio albums, Aromanticism (2017) and the double album græ (2020), are an assertion that the undefinable still exists and dwelling in it is an act of resistance. Acting on screen in The Idol (2023) and MaXXXine (2024), he plays characters who expand the emotional depths of masculinity. His upcoming music is a brutally honest exploration of intimacy.
To try to pin Sumney down on a sound, discipline, or genre is to end up with a handful of fog. In 2021, he synthesized his cinematic and music skills with Blackalachia, a feature-length performance film directed by the artist with an accompanying live album. It was filmed with a 7-piece band on a Blue Ridge mountain top.
There’s probably a biblical analogy to be made about a person who just happens to be named Moses, who flees the binary to the mount, splits a massive body into two, and leads us through the in-between – holy and wholly rebellious. |
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