Bryce Dessner, Anohni Collaborate on New Version of ‘Another World’
Bryce Dessner and Anohni have shared the video for the “string arrangement” version of her 2008 song “Another World,” with the new take featuring on the National guitarist and composer’s new classical work Impermanence/Disintegration, out Friday.
“The music for this album was written to accompany a dance piece choreographed by Rafael Bonachela for the Sydney Dance Company and performed by the incredible Australian String Quartet,” Dessner tells Rolling Stone. “The record also includes beautiful contributions from my friends David Chalmin on electronics and Anohni with a new arrangement of her timeless song ‘Another World.’”
The new visual for “Another World (String Arrangement)” is an excerpt from an hour-long dance work — inspired by the 2019 Australian wildfires — that premiered in Sydney in March 2020. “It feels like the perfect song for the moment we are living through,” Dessner adds.
“Another World” originally featured on Antony and the Johnsons’ 2008 Another World EP. The new rendition is the lone song with vocals and closes Dessner’s Impermanence/Disintegration, which arrived Friday via 37d03d, the label he founded with Justin Vernon and his brother Aaron Dessner.
“I was thinking about how fragile everything is, about how things that you think are structurally sound or permanent actually aren’t,” Dessner said of the album; he previously shared “Impermanence” from the classic work.
Sydney Dance Company’s Rafael Bonachela added in a statement: “It has been a real treat to conceive of this work together with Bryce Dessner and the Australian String Quartet — to explore the emotional drivers through both dance and music and to arrive at a place where the parts knit together so closely to make the whole. And ironically, to be able to shape Impermanence in response to such unexpected, but life-changing global events. For me, this encapsulates the incredible power of contemporary dance and music and how the response of the artist can truly resonate.”
