Hello reader,
Welcome back.
Today, we’ll delve into Art d’Ecco. It’s not only a gorgeous art and architectural style, but also the stage name of a British Columbia, Canada-based indie rock singer and musician who chooses to remain anonymous, as his birth name isn’t publicly known. He was a restaurant line cook as a teen, then began playing in the band Speed to Kill with Jason Corbett, a Vancouver-based musician. He played in a few other local bands after that. And then went solo, working on his sound and persona. By the time of his studio debut, he had harnessed his signature look, a bob wig and makeup, and his sound often described as art or glam rock alongside post-punk revival and elements of indie rock. With influences of Iggy Pop and Deerhunter among others, it should be no surprise that d’Ecco’s music reminds some listeners of Bowie, The Cure, and even Sparks.
d’Ecco’s discography includes the following full-length studio albums: Trespasser (2018), In Standard Definition (2021), After the Head Rush (2022), and Serene Demon (2025).
Scheele’s Green out Friday, October 23rd via Paper Bag Records for your listening pleasure.
And now let’s look at his newest album via d’Ecco’s site: “Art d’Ecco wanted to be someone entirely different. In the ten years since he first adopted his musical nom de guerre, Art has already been many versions of himself–an elusive art-pop architect, a canny glam rocker, most recently a louche poet ambling the streets of New York deep into the night on last year’s Serene Demon. But this time, Art questioned the whole endeavor of making art in the face of an impending doom promised by a seemingly never-ending onslaught of contemporary societal ills. He sought to burn it all down. The result is his fifth album, Scheele’s Green, a fiery reckoning with the world around us and the crucible in which Art d’Ecco dies to be reborn again. “I want people to hear this album and say, ‘That’s Art d’Ecco??’” he proclaims.
For Scheele’s Green, the malaise and disorientation he felt in an era plagued by technocratic billionaires rising up like Bond villains sent him down a historical rabbithole tracing generations of self-destructive human behavior. The album is named for an actual color, first synthesized by Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1775. With the shade previously hard to attain, Scheele’s green quickly became a status symbol for the wealthy, who covered their homes and bodies in it. Just as quickly, they became afflicted with strange ailments thanks to the arsenic compounds needed for the color. Scheele’s green soon became identified as a dangerous luxury the affluent were nevertheless reluctant to quit. “It created this literally toxic society,” Art describes. “This addiction, this allure, was such a rich narrative vein, the same way we can’t look away from our obsession with social media or other technological shifts that might harm us as much as help us. We want these things that make us look hot and give us status, but it’s all a mirage. What if humans are just intrinsically drawn to shit that fucking kills us?”
In earlier days, Art’s makeup and wigs served as a shield for more personal exorcisms, but across his first four albums he’s been gradually peeling back stylistic artifice and layer. Now fully exposed and bare, Art wanted to write differently, to connect with everyone else and capture our collective fear of the future. He bills Scheele’s Green as a state of the union, railing against AI and technocracy, yes, but also climate collapse, and the military-industrial complex, and, well, everything else. He found inspiration in key texts, including the idea of a society divorced from actual community in Guy Debord’s The Society Of The Spectacle and the way William Faulkner conveyed emotion in the very structure of The Sound And The Fury, in turn shaping Scheele’s Green as an anxious and tense album that feels anxious and tense.
In the last few years, Art assembled a mix of young music educators and jazz aficionados based in the Vancouver area as his core band: Junny Chen (guitar), Olivier Leclerc (bass), Hayden Cohen (organ/synth), Kyler Young (saxophone), Yato Noukoussi (drums). The group brought a different energy to Art’s compositions and unlocked a whole new potential. Following a burst of inspiration following the release of Serene Demon, Art gathered the band and co-producer Eric Shea at Vancouver’s hallowed HippoSonic studio. They hunkered down for two months of long days and nights, achieving a gritty, downtown blend of art-rock and post-punk, played live in the room with both fury and precision. “There was a joyous experiment to just embracing the freedom of being in the studio together,” Art recalls. They opted to record the album live in the room, first digitally and then run through a 24-track tape machine, and printed back into digital. The painstaking, somewhat eccentric process allowed he and Shea to capture the frenzied, sweaty energy of the band in the room without the record sounding like a retro pastiche.
And across Scheele’s Green, Art lets it all pour out–sometimes angry, sometimes disenchanted, sometimes poignant, sometimes funny. It’s all there at once in ‘The Death Of Indie,’ the album’s towering seven-minute opener and manifesto. There, Art plays a sort of indie-rock Cassandra sentenced to an asylum as his mad-eyed warnings of AI data centers and abandoned movie theaters full of rats fall on deaf ears, all while the band simmers their way into a contorted, frazzled call to arms. Partially inspired by the experimentation of Miles Davis’ free jazz era, Art and his band embarked on jams that led to bold, untethered arrangements. Over a churning, garage rock riff, ‘How Real Is Real’ is an anti-war song grappling with ICE raids, the genocide in Gaza, and Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. For all its raw rock ‘n’ roll, Scheele’s Green also incorporated alien sounds and instruments, including tubular bells and a three-hundred-year-old harpsichord. Even while overwhelmed by a sense of creative liberation, Art also questions the role of the artist in this world, and in an entertainment industry locating new lows of perniciousness: ‘Disappear Here’ channels desperation over chugging distortion and a blaring saxophone, while ‘Catch 22’ rides a polyrhythmic current to a climactic finale in which Art howls “Money’s on the table!”
No other lyric might sum up the core conflict of Scheele’s Green so well: The constant battle between the elites and the rest of us, whatever form it takes, and how we make meaning within it. Throughout, Art is not immune to nihilism, but time and time again allows the fervor of these new songs to conjure a ragged, determined resilience. Nothing quite turned out the way Art expected when he first arrived bright-eyed in Vancouver over 20 years ago, and nothing quite turned out the way many of us would’ve hoped as we entered a new century. Scheele’s Green offers no easy answers–or rather, doesn’t pretend to know how to counter the world we received in any way besides the loud, real interaction of human beings making music together anyway. All the while, we’re left wondering just how long we’ll hang onto the poisonous Scheele’s greens of our time.
Scheele’s Green ultimately finds Art reimagining the DNA and scope of his work, returning to us raw and human and with a collection of music more violent and urgent than anything he’s ever recorded. ‘It’s hard not to get gallows humor with it, but I just wanted to deliver these feelings full-fucking-throated for the first time,’ Art concludes. ‘It’s an attitude reinvention. We’re drinking champagne as the ship’s going down. But at the same time, I’m not going to give up.'” Amen.
Giving credit where it’s due. Scheele’s Green album credits:
- Produced, Mixed and engineered by Art d’Ecco & Eric Shea
- Recorded & Mixed at Hipposonic Studios Feb 8th to March 30th, 2026
- Mastered by Brock MacFarlane at CPS Mastering
- All songs written by Art d’Ecco, except 10 and 11 (written by Art d’Ecco, Hayden Cohen, Kyler Young, Olivier Leclerc, Yato Noukoussi)
- Noah Dinsdale – Engineer
- Kris Fearon – Assistant Engineer
And now for some hype for both your ears and eyes via Art d’Ecco’s YouTube channel and Paper Bag Records’ YouTube channel:
The opening song setting the tone, “The Death of Indie”:
(All credits and rights to Art d’Ecco and Paper Bag Records)
The saxophone! And a rocking song with old-school style within the video for the song “Disappear Here”:
(All credits and rights to Art d’Ecco and Paper Bag Records)
And one more song! “How Real is Real?”:
(All credits and rights to Art d’Ecco)
After listening a few times, I can say that Scheele’s Green is Art d’Ecco’s most complete and best work to date. The album caught my attention upon the first listen but truly captivated me with repeated listens. So it further grew on me? Listener, I think you may feel the same way. d’Ecco remains a provocateur in the best ways, asking pressing, timely questions amid artistic expression and good songcraft. This is not an art school project or a half-hearted attempt at music. This album is completed with intent. I know that we’ve all heard at least a few tapes that are on the expressionist, avant-garde, and catharsis side for the artist/band side rather than complete works of music for an audience beyond the band or artist, much less a wide audience. And while we can appreciate those releases for what they are, this album is better than that. Scheele’s Green isn’t for the boring or simple-minded, nor is it pretentious. To me, it’s for listeners who appreciate good music, regardless of genre. If you’re here at SWT, that’s you. Congrats and thank you for reading and sticking around. While not every song on Scheele’s Green will appeal to you, at least a few will strike a chord. I think that’s true of most fans’ listening experiences, even with their favorite artists. Rarely do they love each song on an album. Right?
Looking more in depth musically, I love the inclusion of saxophone in general. Every fucking time the instrument is playing on this album, it sounds so damn good. And the instrument is perfectly placed within songs. As a lover and appreciator of all saxophone inclusions in songs, call me greedy, but I want even more saxophone. Lovers of current memes and slang, this is not a saxophone is getting louder situation. Rather, a less desperate one.
At times, the songs, especially the opener “The Death of Indie” and closer “Endings for Beginners”, feature what I would call a descent into madness melodically think noise and wall of sound to make a point and fit within the intended theme- before they shift to a more “normalized” sound that many more casual listeners would find more accessible. Point noted. At all times, d’Ecco is intentional, whether it be additional noise in the melody here, more aggressive vocal delivery to make a point there, or a quieter moment of reflection or shift over there. With some spoken-word vocals instead. It all works together well and will leave you fired up instead of sad. Get out and vote, always. Kudos on the songcraft, musicianship, and execution. Listen and enjoy. This is Art d’Ecco, and it’s fantastic.
Scheele’s Green gets 4 out of 5 Scum Drops from me. There’s a like to like. I think the album is very good overall, and fits well within the 4 Scum Drops range of all new albums this year. Which equates to the 72nd-83rd percentile. At this point, at the lower half of that. Which is still damn good. To me, this is d’Ecco’s best work so far. Long-time fans, what do you think? Where would you place it? I recommend adding the album to your collection in whatever format you choose. Vinyl seems like a great idea.
I’ll always advocate taking the time to listen to every album in its entirety. Listening to Scheele’s Green will take just 47 minutes from start to finish. That’s a few minutes more than an hour and a half if you listen twice back-to-back. Along the way, you’ll discover your own favorite songs free from the influence or bias of others. After several listens, I found the songs highlighted in green below to be my favorites on this album.
The tracklist for Scheele’s Green (song length)
- The Death of Indie (7:08)
- Lake Trilby (4:22)
- Catch 22 (3:14)
- How Real is Real? (4:15)
- The Wolf (3:35)
- Scheele’s Green (3:24)
- Disappear Here (3:52)
- Break & Enter (5:15)
- Beware of Dog (3:56)
- Darién Gap (2:36)
- Endings for Beginners (6:01)
Total runtime: 47:38
For more info, check out his site; for more music, check out his Bandcamp, YouTube, Apple Music Canada, and Spotify pages. Also check out his socials: Instagram, Facebook.
Thank you for reading and supporting good music.
Until next time,
Alex
Scummy Water Tower Productions co-founder, reviewer, business manager, and editor. Thank you for visiting this site, scummywatertower.com, and YouTube for Water Tower Sessions and SWT Interviews. And all of our socials.
Questions, feedback, or more? Contact me: alex@scummywatertower.com
