FROM A NEW CULT IDOL TO A PHILOSOPHER OF POP, TO AN ALBUM ABOUT ALIENS, TO HIP HOP’S GOLDEN ANTIHERO—THIS YEAR’S SOUNDTRACK WAS WINSOME, WEIRD, OTHERWORLDLY, AND WHATEVER

PART 2: JOHN MAUS

PHOTOGRAPHY HEDI SLIMANE
TEXT PATRIK SANDBERG

“I was hoping this would be a transitional thing, as a kind of breakthrough performance,” says John Maus of this year’s We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves, the landmark album that, at this point, represents a pinnacle of notoriety and acclaim for the 30-year-old avant-pop composer. “I hoped it was going to be my Eroica or something, like when I threw down the gauntlet and moved into some transition from early juvenilia into some kind of middle period, and—God-willing—years from now some insane late period. But it ended up being a consummation of a lot of ideas I’d been working with.”

Click here for the full story from VMAN 24 The Decades Issue, Best of Music 2011. Buy the issue here.

KEYWORDS: Best of Music 2011, hedi slimane, John Maus, Patrik Sandberg, VMAN 24 The Decades Issue