In a daring departure from his EDM roots, Maurice Harris, identified professionally as Ionne, has launched his fourth full-length album, A Mild Untruth, by way of 5015 Information. This compelling 10-track assortment marks the artist’s enterprise into different music, weaving wealthy sonic textures with profound thematic depth.
The album attracts inspiration from Ionne’s collaboration with summary expressionist painter Mary Barr Rhodes and projection artist Benjamin Britton. Their multimedia venture, Sonos Lumia, first premiered in Cincinnati in 2022 and explored the symbolic and emotional qualities of sunshine via visible artwork and authentic music. This partnership laid the conceptual groundwork for A Mild Untruth, which delves into the fragile interaction between illumination and shadow, reality and notion.
“We’re conscious of and respect the sunshine due to its distinction to the darkness,” Ionne displays. This duality pulses on the coronary heart of the document, significantly in its opening sequence: “Headlight,” “Nightfall & Daybreak,” “Blacklight,” and “The Neverending Solar.” “Headlight,” a standout observe and the artist’s private favourite, narrates a haunting hit-and-run incident as a metaphor for transition and renewal. Its supernatural aura is visually echoed within the album’s cowl artwork, shot by Kasaad Bullock of The Collective NHV.
Elsewhere, “Nightfall & Daybreak” captures the delicate house between love and separation via a poignant vocal duet, whereas “Blacklight” blurs the boundaries between actuality and creativeness. “The Neverending Solar” affords a crucial reflection on prosperity and its hidden prices, difficult listeners to contemplate the moral dimensions of progress.
The album’s title, A Mild Untruth, is a considerate play on Yale College’s motto, Lux et Veritas (Mild and Fact). “I’ve all the time been enamored by each the altruism and the vanity of professing gentle and reality,” Ionne shares. “Generally we do issues considering they’re good, solely to find later that they’re dangerous.” These “gentle untruths”, the tales we inform ourselves to make sense of life, type the emotional and philosophical core of the venture.
A Mild Untruth affords a nuanced and immersive listening expertise. It’s an album that doesn’t shrink back from complexity however as an alternative finds magnificence in contradiction, and which means within the house between gentle and shadow.
A Mild Untruth is on the market on all main streaming platforms: open.spotify.com/album/1uzOc PsHCXzQ
About Ionne:
Ionne is the musical alias of Maurice Harris, an artist identified for his digital and different soundscapes. With a background that spans visible arts, multimedia collaboration, and music manufacturing, Ionne creates work that’s as conceptually layered as it’s emotionally resonant.
