Sufjan Stevens

The Ascension is the eighth studio album from singer, songwriter and composer Sufjan Stevens and is the long awaited follow-up to Stevens' Carrie abd Lowell. In the time between Carrie and Lowell and The Ascension, Stevens also released Oscar-nominated music for the Luca Guadagnino film Call Me By Your Name; a collaborative album entitled Planetarium with Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner (The National) and James Mcalister; The Decalogue, a solo piano work performed by Timo Andres; and scored several works for ballet: Reflections (Houston Ballet) and Principia (NYCB). The Ascension is musically expansive and sweeping in thematic scope.

Aporia is a New Age album from Sufjan Stevens and his step-father and record label co-owner, Lowell Brams. The 21 songs on Aporia are tightly crafted, resonating with a gem-like intensity, made in the spirit of the New Age composers who sanded off the edges of their synths’ sawtooth waves. Aporia approximates a rich soundtrack from an imagined sci-fi epic brimming with moody, hooky, gauzy synthesizer soundscapes, suggesting the progeny of a John Carpenter, Wendy Carlos, and Mike Oldfield marriage – but it stands apart from these touchstones and generates a meditative universe all its own.

The title of “The Decalogue” has a touch of the grandiose: it means “The Ten Commandments.” Yet this score, composed by Sufjan Stevens for a dance work choreographed by Justin Peck that premiered with the New York City Ballet in May of 2017, is quiet and experimental. Stevens’s piano score, as played and recorded by Timo Andres, sounds like etudes in the Romantic-modernist tradition, as if prompted by Debussy. With “The Decalogue,” releasing digitally and on deluxe edition vinyl on October 18, 2019 and standard edition and CD on December 6, 2019, Sufjan is making—gently, without ostentation—new departures.

The follow-up to 2003’s Michigan, Sufjan Stevens’ Seven Swans was originally released on the 16th of March 2004. At the time the Guardian dubbed it “a record of remarkable delicacy,” and Billboard called it a “consistently moving, subtly beautiful experience.” And in the twenty years since its release, Seven Swans has cemented its place as a seminal album in Sufjan's catalog.

The follow-up to 2003’s Michigan, Sufjan Stevens’ Seven Swans was originally released on the 16th of March 2004. At the time the Guardian dubbed it “a record of remarkable delicacy,” and Billboard called it a “consistently moving, subtly beautiful experience.” And in the twenty years since its release, Seven Swans has cemented its place as a seminal album in Sufjan's catalog.