Am I winning enough to deserve the space I take up?
Love, as they say, makes the world go round, but in modern life, it’s largely been displaced in favor of emptiness, superficiality, and artificiality. This is the impetus behind “Metrics”, the emotional new song from Zanias.
The background behind the song’s creation was spurred by the death of a loved one, the fallout of having to cancel a tour with her band Linea Aspera, and the sudden crisis of faith brought on by the almighty algorithm of the music business and the wider world of late-stage capitalism. Is connecting with an audience as an audience enough? Is being human enough in an inhumane world driven by likes, views and streams? Is our self-worth enough in this toxic culture?
Is existence enough?
“Love was such an obvious priority, and yet we live in a world where it is trampled in favour of something so empty,” says Zanias. “I reflected on this, as well as the way…I’d so heavily come to measure myself via numbers on a screen. I felt so utterly broken and wondered if I had a place in such a world.”
Zanias wrote the song to “free herself from the clutches of this relentless measurement,” with the hope to empower others.
“We are not built for this world and nor should we be,” she asserts. “We will always be enough. Existing is enough.”
The self-directed video was created in a treasured childhood escape, filmed on an iPhone, a GoPro, and a drone with help from her mother and sister. “It is the “rusted stones” I refer to as “my terrain” in Keluar’s ‘Coralline’,” she says. “My family has been visiting the nearby beach for generations…as a child I’d run around these rocks imagining they were spaceships and castles, as an adult I’ve clambered up in the middle of the night after awful things had happened, staring out into the ocean and allowing it to give me strength again. In a way this strange little piece of land is probably the closest place to a home that I have, so I ironically transformed it into an alien landscape. I then played the role of a lost traveler, wandering through this world that breathes and morphs in hallucinatory deviance, desolate and beautiful… and immeasurable.”
Watch the video for “Metrics” below:
Zanias (Linea Aspera, Keluar) is the solo project of Allison Lewis, who has also collaborated with Black Rain, Ancient Methods, Dax J and I Hate Models. As the sole custodian of Fleisch Records she spent many years attuning herself to Berlin dance floors through the timely collision of techno and EBM, but her true passion is for understanding the modality of emotions through songwriting. Sound is her psycho-spiritual catharsis and philosophical exploration of existence, expressed through an intense and ethereal vocal performance, evocative melodies and heavy rhythmic components.
This year’s Grauzone festival in The Hague, Netherlands will present a Fleisch Records showcase curated by Fleisch co-founder Zanias. The pioneering Berlin label shaped the new wave of EBM. You can purchase tickets here.
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