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May 09, 2023 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Merissa Blitz

Arthur Moon is the moniker of Brooklyn-based art pop singer/songwriter Lora-Faye Åshuvud. Åshuvud debuted in 2019 with their self-titled record, followed in 2021 by Chaos! Chaos! Chaos! Side A, both of which introduced their blend of electronic avant-garde pop. The latter record also served as the first half of an A side/B side collection, with the B side of the album due out next month on June 1st.

As Åshuvud describes, “This is a much weirder record than the self-titled Arthur Moon debut, in that the idea I had was to make an album that was ‘coherently incoherent’—like a mix CD your friend made for you in high school, like scrolling through the perfect Tiktok algorithm, like the experience of gender I was having at the time.

I wanted to evoke all of this chaos, mixed genre, entropy, but within it, a real sense of direction and stillness. So the record moves from a frantic experimental electro-pop tune about Georgia O’Keefe, to a slow-and-low heater about changing your name, to a drum & bass-inspired tune about god and sex, to a fully live string orchestrated ballad about falling in love with a straight girl.”

Åshuvud returned earlier this year with their new singles, “Ghost Ranch” and “7 O’clock Clap,” and today they’re back with another new track, “What My Name Was,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“What My Name Was” finds Åshuvud delivering a dose of decadent slow-burning electronica, with their vocals twirling gently above subdued synth beds and sparse pulsing beats. The track initially feels shadowy and luxuriant, but it begins shifting in new directions as the song unwinds. In the midsection, marching percussion and brittle guitar textures offer new shades to the track before the band ascends into a distorted and blown-out climax. Åshuvud is constantly pulling at disparate new stylistic threads, yet she also blends each element together with uncanny ease.

Åshuvud says of the track, “There’s something uncanny about the way creativity can feel like such a similar process to being in love. We build these beautiful worlds that often live mostly in our heads just as we invent and project imaginary characters onto the people we love. What I realized while I was writing this song was that this was also true for my own self—I could create myself, I could change, I could desire a new person into being.”

Check out the song below. Chaos! Chaos! Chaos! Side B is due out June 1st via Switch Hit Records. Pre-order the record here.