Later this summer, G. Brenner will release a new full-length album, Brushfire, on Very Jazzed. The record is overtly centered on death and grief, and like much of Brenner’s work as Pastel the songs are able to transcend their intimately individual focus to explore wider seams of loss and sorrow. Back in April we covered the title track, which reversed the process in evoking the rising ecological disaster of the American West referenced in the title to bring a more personal trauma into relief. “The peculiar sadness of a present so immediate it prevents us from envisioning a future,” we wrote. “A grief so strong it registers even as the flames rise and the air turns to soot”
Today sees the release of brand new single, ‘Dee Dee’. A reflection on a late professor, the song once again homes in on death as a central theme, but also serves as a further exploration into the lessons the lost person taught, and the value they offered on earth. Layers of ambient textures welcome sentiments into life, the pervading sense of loss joined by themes of gender fluidity and queer kinship, and the idea of mourning as an expression of gratitude. “You were a dancer / Never settled into / One form,” Brenner sings. “You taught of / Bodies like ours / And the violence / To tether us to Two poles.”
But true to G. Brenner’s style, larger forces intervene. Some pulse emerges within the barely shifting ambient style, slowly drawing Brenner away from the confines of the body into the nameless movement of a crowd. Soon the track develops into full blown techno, a nocturnal sound of heat and flash and movement which positions the dance floor as what Brenner calls “a sacred site where queer pasts, presents, and futures collapse.”
The tragedy of the track is how this disconnection is never complete. The past does not collapse, not fully. Brenner is never able to fully lose himself amid the bodies, anchored to his own by loss and trauma. So even as the beat rises, his plaintive voice returns once more. Calling on Dee Dee to visit or watch over. To guide him through the dark.
Do you dance with me now, Dee Dee?
Feel the pulse in me now, Dee Dee
Guide me now, Dee Dee
It’s so bleak now, Dee Dee
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‘Dee Dee’ is accompanied by a video directed by LA-based artist Amara Higuera Hopping, with choreography from Canadian choreographer and dance artist Alexsa Durrans. Performers include Brenner himself, alongside New Kjochakorn Ngamnimmitthum, Marina Brenner, Hugo Cervantes-Flores, Annakai Hayakawa Geshlider, Dylan Karlsson, Brittany Ko and Sai Tripathi.
‘Dee Dee’ is out now and available via the G. Brenner Bandcamp page, including a lathe-cut 7″ edition. Brushfire is out on the 20th August and you can pre-order it now.
