Art Angels

* **Album**
* Critical Reception
* Physical Release

Album artwork

***Art Angels*** is the fourth solo studio album by Grimes, released digitally on November 6, 2015 via 4AD and in physical formats on December 11 the same year. The songs on the album are metaphorically referred to as 'acts'.

## Background

*c* began planning the record in 2012 as the follow-up to her third solo studio album *Visions*, however, she scrapped most of the material from those sessions and began a new set of recordings in 2014 due to the original subject matter being "depressing."
She told the FADER:

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> ❝ It wasn’t so much a scrapped album. It was just [songs] that didn’t make it onto this album. Basically, I was doing a bunch of stuff, and maybe a bit before Go, I was like, "You know, my life is getting a lot better. I’m going to put all this stuff on a hard drive and start again." There were just hundreds of songs—on this album that I’m making now, there’s at least a hundred songs that won’t make it onto this. I think all musicians have songs that don’t make it onto records. [..] Everything I made after [starting over] was 10 times better. ❞
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The track REALiTi, which came from the earlier recordings, was released as a demo in early 2015, and Grimes made a decision to include a reworked and finished version in *Art Angels* due to critical acclaim and overall positive reception of the song.

Grimes' constant touring in 2013 for her 2012 album, *Visions*, almost led to a physical collapse by the end of the year, bringing her to a point where she recalled "putting a hand up and grabbing a piece of [her] hair, and [she] could just pull [her] hair out". She also became tired of how the music industry ignored her technical abilities and would focus on her being a "female musician" and having a "girly voice"; she responded to these generalizations with "yeah, but I'm a producer and I spend all day looking at f\*\*\*ing graphs and EQs and doing really technical work".

*Art Angels* was a shift from her previous works, explaining in an interview:

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> ❝ I think my music used to be more escapist. [..] *Visions* didn't really acknowledge reality, but this record is more about looking reality in the face. ❞
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### Inspiration

She told *Dazed*:

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> ❝ Lyrically, it's more political and less abstract than before." [..] Like, really trippy free association about nature and s\*\*\*. There's a song that's from the perspective of a butterfly in the Amazon as people are cutting down trees; there's a song that's from the perspective of angels who are polluted, so they're crying polluted tears. I feel like it's more about the Earth. I think I was more in society when I was making it, so it feels more grounded. ❞
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#### Name

In an interview with Hans Ulrich for Buffalo Zine, Grimes talked about the inspiration for the album name:

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> ❝ I would always have these things-I would nickname them art fairies or something where, if I would do things that weren't true to myself, they would punish me and not give me inspiration. And every time I would do something. that wasn't artistically true, I would literally have these sort of creative punishment periods. And so I started feeling like I was in this weird dialogue with these spirits and I had to like, please them, or I wouldn't be able to make good art. This sounds insane. [laughs] But yeah, no, I remember rolling words around my mouth and I thought of *Art Angels*, and I thought that summed up what they were quite nicely. These beings that I have to kind. of feed with good creative content, or they will punish me with writer's block. I remember I was listening to this Lana Del Rey song when I got the idea, it's unreleased or leaked I think, but it's one of my favourites, called "Angels Forever". I wish she would release an official version so bad. ❞
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The album went through working titles of "*Fairy*," "*Avalon*," and "*Queen of the Night*" (after Mozart's supernatural anti-heroine from *The Magic Flute*).

## Composition

Grimes wrote, recorded, produced and engineered all of the tracks on the album alone after having a lack of control over production while collaborating with other artists. She began using Ableton after recording *Visions* entirely in GarageBand and also learned how to play the guitar, drums, keys, ukulele, and violin to explore new musical directions on *Art Angels*. Realizing it was "too much pressure" to pay per hour to work in a professional studio, the album was recorded by Boucher in her home studio in Los Angeles, California.

## Release and Promotion

On March 8, 2015, Grimes released a music video for the demo version of her song REALiTi as a gift to her fans. REALiTi was produced during the scrapped recording sessions for *Art Angels* and not intended to be included on the final version of her solo fourth album. Boucher stated that the demo version which she released was "not mixed or mastered" as she had "lost the [song's] Ableton file". Despite Boucher regarding the demo as "a bit of a mess", REALiTi was well received by critics and fans, which led her to consider including a new version of the song on the final release of *Art Angels*. When the track listing for *Art Angels* was announced, a new version of the song appeared on the digital release and the demo version was included as a bonus track in the CD version only.

Grimes shared the title and cover artwork for *Art Angels* on social media networks on October 19, 2015 and announced that a new music video would be released the following week. On October 26, 2015, Grimes revealed that her new album would be available digitally on November 6, 2015, with releases in physical formats on December 11 in the same year. To accompany the announcement, Grimes released her Flesh without Blood/Life in the Vivid Dream music video, a digital single for Flesh without Blood and individual artwork for each track on *Art Angels*. SCREAM was released as the second single from *Art Angels* on October 29, 2015. Kill V. Maim was released as a promotional single on January 19, 2016 with a music video. California followed, with the release of a music video later in May 2016. On October 5, 2016, Grimes and her friend and singer HANA released 7 videos the same day called *AC!D Reign Chronicles*. The film includes Grimes' Butterfly, Belly of the Beat, World Princess part II, SCREAM, and HANA's "Underwater", "Chimera", and "Avalanche".

The last music video for Venus Fly was released on February 7, 2017.

## Album Visuals

* Album artwork
* Song Artwork
* Miscellaneous

### Album Artwork

Standard versionJapanese versionExtended versionBTSBTSBTSBTSDiscarded artworkFacebook Videos 11 Dec 2015 001Stop-motion preview

### Song Artwork

On Tumblr, Grimes revealed the artwork she had created for every single song on the album.

Laughing and not being normalCaliforniaSCREAMFlesh without BloodBelly of the BeatKill V. MaimEasilyPinRealitiWorld Princess part IIVenus FlyLife in the Vivid DreamButterfly

## Tracklist

* Tracklist
* Scrapped Tracklist

An early tracklist was shared by Grimes on her Instagram and then quickly deleted.

1. forever fuck up
2. World Princess part II
3. Venus Fly
4. Flesh without Blood
5. SCREAM
6. LSS
7. Miami Bolero
8. Evangelion
9. California
10. Life in the Vivid Dream
11. 4 oh

### Outtakes

* forever(?) fuck up
* LSS
* Miami Bolero
* Evangelion
* 4 oh
* Medieval Warfare. (An "old demo" Grimes repurposed for the Suicide Squad tracklist.)

## Credits

Credits adapted from the liner notes of *Art Angels*.

* Grimes – vocals, production, engineering
* Pan Wei-Ju - vocals (track 3)
* Janelle Monaé - vocals (track 12)
* Mark "Spike" Stent – mixing
* Geoff Swan – mixing assistance
* Tom Coyne – mastering
* Randy Merrill – mastering

## Trivia

* Art Angels is the only one of Grimes' album with a title track.
* Grimes described the album's sound as "orchestral emo production" in her interview for Pitchfork, when asked to describe it in three words.
* It is said that Jay-Z helped Grimes pick the songs to put on Art Angels.*[citation needed]*

## References

1. ↑ https://youtu.be/Tv9YoYCKNoE?t=9
2. ↑ https://www.undertheradar.co.nz/utr/interviewMore/CID/451/N/Grimes.utr
3. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20160518073518/http://www.stereogum.com/1787656/grimes-says-that-she-isnt-scrapping-music-because-of-negative-reactions/news/
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 https://web.archive.org/web/20160609125543/http://www.thefader.com/2015/07/28/grimes-cover-story-interview
5. ↑ https://ew.com/article/2015/08/26/grimes-new-album/
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/26282/1/grimes-weird-science
7. ↑ https://view.publitas.com/buffalo-zine/buffalo-earth-ss20/page/76-77
8. ↑ http://www.thefader.com/2015/10/28/grimes-recording-process-future-music-magazine
9. ↑ http://pitchfork.com/news/58769-grimes-shares-video-for-previously-unheard-track-realiti/
10. ↑ http://www.spin.com/2015/10/grimes-flesh-without-blood-life-in-the-vivid-dream-video/
11. ↑ http://pitchfork.com/news/61479-grimes-announces-art-angels-lp-shares-cover/
12. ↑ http://pitchfork.com/news/61760-grimes-releases-flesh-without-bloodlife-in-the-vivid-dream-video-announces-art-angels-details/
13. ↑ http://www.popmatters.com/post/grimes-scream-ft.-aristophanes-singles-going-steady/
14. ↑ http://pitchfork.com/news/65327-grimes-shares-california-video-watch/
15. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOwhuTlxE54
16. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqp3Ic8iwWE
17. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADPk5PpkjMg
18. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpAsOEsamA0
19. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQLvqvLvUIY
20. ↑ http://www.factmag.com/2016/10/05/grimes-acid-reign-chronicles-butterfly-scream-belly-beast-videos/
21. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6VUa8z1pQw
22. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHNb1k7YxeA
23. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw-NQGmXUBE
24. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/Grimes/videos/watch-the-venus-fly-video-now-featuring-janelle-mon%C3%A1e-and-directed-edited-by-gri/1397121650329795
25. ↑ https://diymag.com/2015/10/27/grimes-has-shared-artwork-for-the-tracks-on-art-angels
26. ↑ https://vk.com/photo-9986050\_358797348
27. ↑ https://itunes.apple.com/us/post/idsa.b41516e2-599c-11e6-9cab-10198ba63a1f
28. ↑ https://youtu.be/umoqd0VbRI4?si=sL-p2-UCkHQs25jB&t=427