Experimental political pop artist Mary Ocher is set to return with a musical tour-de-force titled Approaching Singularity: Music for The End of Time, set for release on November 3 this year.  Examining the collective dread of the impending future Ocher, the eternal outsider, has an uncanny ability to craft curious intricate worlds. Unraveling our innermost fears and triggering paranoia of the world we live in – which seems to be spinning out of control faster and faster – a notion increasingly difficult to avoid these days.

Today Ocher has unveiled the first single off the upcoming album, “Is Life Possible? (feat. Les Trucs).”  The first single of Approaching Singularity: Music for The End of Time is a peculiar synth anthem with the title taken from a quote of Judith Butler’s “Undoing Gender”. Mary’s voice is pitched a few octaves down – giving it an alien male presence and authority, an effect trademarked by Laurie Anderson and more recently used by Planningtorock.

The provocative video accompanying “Is Life Possible?” features news clips, that imply that from the perspective of the 1990s, 2020 was nothing short of a dystopian, apocalyptic future.

Approaching Singularity: Music for The End of Time is a stunning run-thru the history of experimental and electronic music, and exploration through minimalism (via field recordings, ambient, dub, cosmic music, psych folk, minimal synthesizer pieces, sound experiments and various uses of sampling techniques).

The new recordings feature collaborations with Barry Burns (Mogwai), synth-wizard turned-contemporary-composer Roberto Cacciapaglia who contributed a piano piece that turned into the title track, Red Axes, cyborgian art pop duo Les Trucs, tracks with Mary’s drummer duo Your Government, and artwork by AI mastermind Boris Eldagsen. It was recorded and mixed with Microtonal artist Peder Simonsen and Mercury Award-winning producer Mike Lindsay of Tunng and LUMP. 

Ocher was born two years after 1984 in the capital city of the largest country in the world, before the collapse of the former Soviet Union. She is of Jewish/Ukrainian descent. Her parents moved to Tel Aviv during the Gulf War, and there she grew up absorbing xenophobia and nationalism from an early age. This subsequently left a distinct mark on her creative output – a considerable part of which is questioning authority and the myth of the nationhood. She has resided in Berlin since the age of 20. She is the owner of two passports, both of which bring her nothing but shame. Mary is an outspoken critic of fascism and oppression and of both the Russian and Israeli states and their occupations.