Emmy The Great releases new cut "Chang-E"

"Chang-E" is the fourth track to be shared from Emmy The Great's new album, landing after earlier outings "A Window/O’Keeffe", "Mary" and "Dandelions/Liminal".

Emmy The Great says of the new single, "It begins with this. "Chang-E", the wife of the tyrant Hou Yi, drinks the elixir of immortality to save China from his eternal reign. She ascends to the moon, and lives there with the Jade Rabbit, its original inhabitant. In Mid-Autumn, we celebrate Chang-E’s sacrifice with a festival of lanterns and lights. Many centuries later, NASA tells the moon-bound Apollo 11 astronauts to look out for the Chinese queen and her rabbit. Michael Collins replies, 'We’ll keep a close eye out for the bunny girl'."

Of the accompanying visual, Emmy The Great adds, "I wanted to tell the story of the moon goddess as I heard it as a child. It's a lesser known version of the famous legend (which forms the centrepiece of Mid-Autumn celebrations), and all the more evocative because Chang-E's destiny is decided by an act of defiance. I had worked with animator Renee Zhan on her film O Black Hole, and I knew she would understand the story and its roots. The creative team also included Mona Chalabi (storyboard), Armiliah Aripin (editing), and Jesse Romain (production). In the fragmented lives we're living in at the moment, the ideas came together remotely from around the world. This is reflected in the footage between the animation, which is from my personal archive, and a performance of Chang-E on Hong Kong's RTHK, that I performed while five months pregnant."

April / 月音 will follow on from Emmy The Great's 2016 LP Second Love.