Anamanguchi - [USA] 2LP Vinyl Record

• 45 RPM.
• Deluxe Gatefold Jacket.
• Printed cardstock inner sleeves.

Anamanaguchi is a four-piece band from New York and Los Angeles made up of Peter Berkman, Ary Warnaar, James DeVito, and Luke Silas.

"This album feels like a teenage coming-of-age movie, but in the domain of internet-based fantasy escapism,” says Ary. “Escaping from reality can be an amazing way to find yourself and be creative, but it can also be a free pass for lack of responsibility and unchecked desires. [USA] is a reflection on all this, the ups and downs of accepting it… which lots of people seem to be in the process of doing."

Though the band has always been inventive, [USA] is a significant progression. For years, Anamanaguchi presented an optimistic, overdriven version of art on the internet. [USA] is equally ambitious in its world-building, but it marks a departure that is in part sonic — they employ a much wider palette of sounds and voices, both synthetic and human, than ever before — as well as conceptual: perhaps for the first time, Anamanaguchi confront reality.

“Lorem Ipsum (Arctic Anthem)” is the album’s first single. “This particular song deals with environmental forces so immense as to be beyond our control, but not our ability to notice and grasp them,” Pete says. “There’s a lot more in the album about these unavoidable realities — conditions, names, identities, labels — that none of us chose, but have to learn to live with.”

The Latin lyrics to “Lorem Ipsum (Arctic Anthem)” are sung using Vocaloid and come from Cicero’s 1st-century BC discourse on the distinction between pleasure & goodness, which just so happens to be the original source for the popular “dummy text” used in graphic design. “The decision to use words on this album gave it a new kind of structure that let us explore familiar feelings in a different way,” Pete adds, “like the feeling of ‘happy tears’ that comes from the combination of losing and understanding, but neither on their own.”