« In Plato's Symposium, Aristophanes recounts the origins of humanity. Originally, humans were four-legged, four-armed, and double-sexed. Fearing human beings were becoming too powerful, the deity Zesus had them sliced in half, leaving their heads facing inward so they could eternally measure their bodies' absences. They were thus doomed to feel incomplete until they found their other halves. And when they did, they would throw their arms around each other and weave their flesh together in an attempt to become one again.
In the Bible's Genesis, after creating Adam (the persona-prototype), God realizes that he requires a mate. He rips a rib from Adam's body and begets Eve, a lifelong partner.
Many of the origin stories about the inception of our species establish this blueprint for coexistence – that every body has a destined companion, and remains in absence without one. Our modern construct of romance upholds this paradigm; romantic love is the paramount prize of existence.

In response to this construction, Aromanticism is a concept album about lovelessness as a sonic dreamscape. It seeks to question the idea that romance should be normative and necessary. It isn't protest music, however, as much as it is process music. It's the 2am sweat you wake up in, fearing that lonesomeness might not just be a transitionary hallway that you're passing through on the way to inevitable partnership. It's recognizing that the journey might not be the destination, but rather, the whole damn trip has been a waste of time. It's admitting that you still desperately crave affection, even if you're not fully capable of returning it. It's recognizing statelessness as stasis. It's wondering why, as a first grader, you would unbox your markers and couple them into personified pairs. It's wondering why every restaurant you take yourself to has each table set for two. It's wondering how privileged people can feel love interpersonally but still adhere to systems of social hierarchy that cause them to treat othered groups with indifference. It's wondering if our urgent fear of dying alone is cellularly inherent or socially inherited. It's wondering – if God is love, but you don't feel love, are you a godless being?
Alternative titles for Aromanticism could be: Love, or Lack Thereof; Narcissus; Don't Touch Me; Please Touch Me; Sure, Let's Touch Each Other but Please Leave Right After We Cum; Grey-A; It's Not You, It's Me; It's Not You – Actually, It's Not Anyone; It's Not Me, It's My Parents.
Written in Montreal, Los Angeles, Asheville, Topanga, Laguna, Big Bear, coastal Nicaragua, and on a sleepy ship traversing the Pacific ocean, making the album was a 3-year adventure into the parts of the self that society encourages us to silence for the sake of our sanity.
It features performances and production contributions from Matt Otto (Majical Cloudz), Thundercat, Joshua Willing Halpern, Paris Strother (KING), Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Rob Moose, Ian Chang (Son Lux), Tosin Abasi (Animals as Leaders), Nicole Miglis (Hundred Waters), Ludwig Görannson, Cam Obi and more. All of the lyrics and vocal arrangements were written by me (Moses), and genre is shirked while choir-inspired vocal layering is employed in order to explore the multiplicities that are contained within a single person.

The album title was chosen before any of its songs were written. The not-yet-in-the-dictionary definition of an “aromantic” is simply someone who doesn't completely feel romantic attraction. I'm just trying to get it out from over the red squiggly line. »

Since emerging onto the scene in 2014, Moses Sumney has ridden a wave of word-of-mouth praise, hushed recordings, and dynamic live performances. It's an organic, patient ascent all too rare in today's musical climate. In a voice both mellifluous and haunting, Sumney makes future music that transmogrifies classic tropes, like moon-colony choir reinterpretations of old jazz gems. His vocals narrate a personal journey through universal loneliness atop otherworldly compositional backdrops.

Following the self-release of his debut cassette EP, Mid-City Island, and 2015's 7", Seeds/Pleas, Sumney has performed around the world alongside forebears like David Byrne, Karen O, Sufjan Stevens, Solange, James Blake and more. With his 2016 Lamentations EP, The California and Ghana-raised troubadour widened the spectrum of his heretofore "bedroom" music, incorporating songs that feature more elaborate production and evocative songwriting. Now his inspired ascent continues.

His proper debut album, Aromanticism is a concept album about lovelessness as a sonic dreamscape. It seeks to interrogate the social constructions around romance. The debut will include the devastating, billowing synths of "Doomed," which in a way serves as the album's thesis statement, as well as new versions of standouts "Lonely World" and "Plastic." It's a deliberate, jaw-dropping statement that can leave you both enlightened and empty.