July 8, 2022 Courtesy of Planetary Group
I spent too long chasing adventures in L.A and dealing with people I thought were kindred spirits on the basis that they had made films/music/art that were meaningful to me when I was younger. In reality the figures behind them were hollow…shadows. People of no fixed personality or loyalty. I felt like Diogenes, being perceived as a lunatic while looking for an honest man. ~ Blixie Perestroika
The eponymously named Blixie Perestroika is the musical entity of the London-born, half-Scottish songwriter, director, and singer. Having immersed herself in multiple worlds (academia, the army, film, animal rescue), Blixie was on track to release her debut EP before a predatory experience with a collaborator/producer changed her trajectory.
After years of writing in isolation and unreleased recordings, Blixie found herself moving away from Los Angeles, to the heart of rural Europe to rebuild a ruined estate – and leave the ghosts of her past behind. In the stone stillness of a medieval town, shuttered in by the pandemic, disquieting voices demanded a release. Lyrically seizing subjects as though just asking the question could heave the ghosts of history and in so doing spill their secrets, Blixie Perestroika’s debut album Ambition is Low is a call for accountability, a scream in the dark and a confession at dawn: a dream not far removed from the acid self-deprecation of Blixie’s heroes, Primo Levi, Ian Curtis, Stuart Adamson, and Sylvia Plath. The album is the work of Blixie and longtime producer/co-writer Jack Dawe, a Chicago native and British born Co-producer Morgan Corbeau. Sonically hovering somewhere between Smashing Pumpkins, Muse, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Indochine, Siouxsie Sioux and Nine Inch Nails, Blixie Perestroika’s cathartic debut, Ambition Is Low, is set for release September 9th 2022.
“The release date of the Album is September 9th, the date John Lennon released ‘Imagine.’” explains Blixie Perestroika. “It was a bit of an inside-joke because of the sheer, mind-numbing audacity of releasing anything on that hallowed date and also, because the album title is the antithesis of this broad social desire to strive to be heard, to hope for impact. So to set a debut release on the day that an album of arguably the greatest social impact in rock music was released is a bit sardonic.”
“The title is also a play on an Ian Curtis lyric from ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’: “When routine bites hard, and ambitions are low…” continues Blixie. “It is heartbreaking and heartfelt and gut-wrenching when he sings it as an observation, or admission, of defeat. I’ve always loved the lyric, but have altered it to mean something a bit different, applied it to a different time and context. Nowadays it feels like a kind of amorphous ambition has settled over everyone like a gas…it is unthinkable not to be pushing or promoting something, and that thing is usually some caricature version of your idealized self. I find it depressing and I’m suspicious of that desire, that ambition. Tired of narcissists, tired of the relentless noise. It’s probably a Miserabilist perspective, and I’m not trying to cut anyone down, I know everyone needs aspiration or a level of self belief to get up in the morning and keep going. When we write as a band, it’s for ourselves because we can’t contain it any longer. Afterwards though there is a moment where you think, ‘fuck – maybe someone out there will get this and maybe my fantasy of finding truly like-minded people out there actually exists…” but even after pouring my lifeblood into this album over the last several years…there’s no control over whether people will connect with it or not. And that’s okay. So the point is to do it for it’s own sake. Fuck ambition. Ambition is low.
Surely it’s more useful to plant a tree, or something.”
