PHEW Announces Reissue of 1992 Album 'Our Likeness' & Shares Title Track

Today Avant-garde vocalist, electronics innovator and post-punk artist PHEW has shared details of a long-awaited reissue of her 1992 album Our Likeness, set for release on Mute on February 17th, 2023.

Our Likeness saw Phew return to Conny Plank's legendary studio in Cologne (Kraftwerk, Neu! D.A.F. etc) after more than a decade when Chrislo Haas (1956-2004 - one of the driving forces in modern electronic music, and an important figure in the Neue Deutsche Welle scene) invited her to collaborate.

Haas, who had met Phew briefly when Plank engineered her debut solo album in 1981, arranged for Alexander Hacke (guitar / Einstürzende Neubauten) and Thomas Stern (bass / Crime & the City Solution) to join. Can's peerless drummer Jaki Liebezeit also reunited with Phew to collaborate alongside this new generation of German experimental musicians and the resulting album gets its reissue on February 17th on clear vinyl, CD, and digitally.

MORE ABOUT PHEW

Phew first came to the fore as the vocalist of Japanese post-punk group Aunt Sally (whose 1979 debut was reissued last year on Mesh-Key) before going on to record a solo single with Ryuichi Sakamoto. Her 1981 self-titled album, recorded with Liebezeit and Holger Czukay, was engineered by Conny Plank, and was followed by 1987's View.

Chrislo Haas (D.A.F. / Liaisons Dangereuses / Der Plan) introduced Phew to Daniel Miller, for the original release of Our Likeness. Phew remembers, "When I was recording at Conny's Studio in 1981, a young German man came to visit, sat quietly in the studio for a while and left without saying a word. His politeness was long remembered and can still be recalled. It was when he came to Japan that I discovered he was Chrislo Haas of D.A.F. At the end of the 1980s he visited me in Tokyo, then we decided to make something together, and a few months later we were recording at Conny's Studio. Chrislo contacted the musicians who took part, Alex Hacke, Jaki Liebezeit and Thomas Stern, told Mute about the project and Our Likeness was released. I often wonder what kind of music Chrislo would have made if he had still been here on earth. Twenty-four years later, I met Alex Hacke again at a festival in Poland, where I got to play with hackedepicciotto. And now I am working with Danielle de Picciotto. More to come!"

Phew rarely looks backwards and the latest phase of her career - first heard on the Japan-only release New World (2015) and more recently on albums that include 2021's New Decade (Mute), numerous sold-out cassette releases, and the compilations Vertigo KO (Disciples, 2020) and Vertical Jamming (Disciples vinyl edition, 2022) - has delivered a powerful new distillation of Phew's artistic voice.

Phew will return to Europe in December for an unmissable live performance at MADEIRADiG festival in Madeira, Portugal on December 10th.