attachment-Sufjan Stevens Angelo De Augustine a beginners mind

Sufjan Stevens & Angelo De Augustine prep 'A Beginner’s Mind' (stream 2 tracks)

Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine have collaborated on a new album, A Beginner’s Mind, which will be out September 24 via Asthmatic Kitty. Each of the album’s 14 songs are loosely based on a film, including The Thing, She’s Gotta Have it, Night of the Living Dead, Point Break, Hellraiser III, Bring it On, Silence of the Lambs (the album is dedicated to Jonathan Demme) and more. They say it’s less “cinematic exegesis” and more “rambling philosophical inquiry.”

You can listen to the album’s opening song, “Reach Out” (based on Wings of Desire) and “Olympus” (based on Clash of the Titans) below, and both of those tracks are also out as a 7″ single.

The artwork for A Beginner’s Mind was created by Daniel Anum Jasper, who designed movie posters in Ghana cinemas, and here’s more on that from the press materials:

In Ghana during the late ’80s, a novel “mobile cinema” culture emerged when enterprising film fans screened Hollywood blockbusters in the backs of pick-up trucks using portable generators. To advertise the movies, Ghanaian artists painted alternate posters, inspired only by the scant information they had about each film. A pioneer of this form—Daniel Anum Jasper—was commissioned by Stevens and De Augustine to paint a series of new works for A Beginner’s Mind (including covers for three 7-inch singles). Information about the project was deliberately kept vague so that Mr. Jasper could work without restraint. Mythical deities and monsters, zombies, skydivers and a celebrated American director (Jonathan Demme, to whom the album is dedicated) were submitted as visual cues. The resulting paintings are a graphic simulacrum for the same sense of wonder, wordplay, and intrigue that shape A Beginner’s Mind.

Check out A Beginner’s Mind‘s cover art and tracklist, below.

Sufjan released five-volume ambient album Convocations earlier this year.

You can pick up Sufjan albums, including Carrie & Lowell, Seven Swans, Illinois, and Michigan, on vinyl in the BrooklynVegan shop.

sufjan reach out

attachment-Sufjan Stevens Angelo De Augustine a beginners mind

1. Reach Out 3:43
2. Lady Macbeth In Chains 3:42
3. Back To Oz 4:25
4. The Pillar Of Souls 4:04
5. You Give Death A Bad Name 5:11
6. Beginner’s Mind 2:36
7. Olympus 3:07
8. Murder And Crime 3:43
9. (This Is) The Thing 3:13
10. It’s Your Own Body And Mind 2:27
11. Lost In The World 3:20
12. Fictional California 3:03
13. Cimmerian Shade 5:01
14. Lacrimae 2:05