Smoker’s cough (afterword) - aoun
interview + mV premiere
With a decade of experience in the music scene, Aoun, a New York based producer and songwriter of Palestinian and Jordanian heritage, is getting set to release his first EP, a concept record called “The Shepherd & All Her Beautiful Sheep.” His most recent single “Smoker’s Cough (Afterword)” serves as the melancholic ending to the EP.
Having collaborated and worked with many artists worldwide including Tor Miller, Miette Hope, TOLEDO, Hunter LaMar and Big Dumb Baby, Aoun brings a wealth of experience to his fresh and innovative approach, shaped by the diverse influences of his experiences from his home and the vibrant energy of New York.
The album, structured like a storybook, unfolds as a captivating narrative, telling the story of his time with a previous lover through a series of emotive tracks.
“Smoker’s Cough” is a simple, pensive song that to us, captures the soul of moving forward after an emotional loss. This song explores what it means to have lost, and how we identify ourselves and our value in what remains. Despite it’s gloomy nature, Aoun delivers the story through a catchy melody supported only by his strong acoustic guitar playing. A short, heartbreaking finale to a rich, vibrant tapestry of love and loss and the weight of discovering the world around you from a new perspective.
You can listen to Smoker’s Cough(Afterword) by Aoun on all streaming platforms now. Expect the full EP, ‘The Shepherd & All Her Beautiful Sheep’ to be released later this year.
Ulysses had the privelege of directing and producing the music video for this song. It was a pleasure to work with Aoun and Production Designer Micaela Bottari to make this vision come to life.
Keep reading on for our conversation with Aoun about this song:
How have you felt since Smoker's Cough was released?
Feeling very excited and relieved for sure, the reception has been great and I have nothing to complain about.
Tell us a little bit about your musical journey so far, how did you get your start?
I’ve been playing music for as long as I can remember, when I was very young (five or six) I think, my mother was a flamenco dance teacher, and on weekends at the center she used to teach at she would enroll me in classes which is how I got my start playing. It’s been an obsessive snowballing situation ever since.
Who has been someone that has influenced your music lately?
That’s a long ever changing and ever growing list. Right now some artists I would have to say are Blake Mills, Black Country New Road, Dijon, Genesis Owusu and Madison Cunningham. I don’t think I necessarily sound anything like these artists but their work is my current obsession.
How has your experience living in the States influenced your work and your growth as an artist?
I’ve been in the United States about 10 years now, and I would say it’s less the place itself that’s influenced me as much as the people I tend to find myself surrounded by artists and other creative people all the time, and not necessarily within the medium of music, and I always find it all very inspiring. Although I will say often thinking of home tends to be an equal inspiration in itself.
Smokers Cough is an afterword, but was that the intention when you wrote it? How did you think about it in context to the whole EP?
It’s funny, I wrote Smoker’s Cough way after I had what I thought was a finished record. The record tells the story of my time with a previous lover of mine and is structured like a storybook or novel, with a prologue, an epilogue and four ‘chapters’ in the middle. Months after I had finished writing and even recording those six tracks I found myself feeling a little lonely and pensive. Smoker’s Cough was written in about twenty minutes and started with those lonely feelings paired with me telling myself I’d eventually quit smoking. Those two themes weirdly fell very intertwined to me and the song graciously wrote itself, and by the time it was done felt like a very appropriate end to the record. In terms of the context of the record itself, the song did appear at a weird point as like I said I already had an epilogue that I’m very happy with, and it felt wrong to put Smokers Cough before it, so my natural inclination was to look at as sort of an ‘Author’s Afterword’ like at the end of most novels, and now when I listen through the record it feels incredibly appropriate.
Talk to us about the importance of self awareness when writing music. Do you often react in the moment to how something sounds, or do you wait until you have more of a song finished to then go back and edit?
I think it depends a lot on how you write, this record came out to be extremely auto-biographical and so naturally I think with these kinds of songs you need to be quite self aware, in terms of how honest with yourself you are being and with how honest to the overall story it is.
Self editing is always an interesting thing with musicians, I think one of the biggest parts of growing within music is learning that its really not about getting something ‘perfect’ but rather to make sure its delivering whatever message you are trying to convey. I wrote the majority of these songs as the events were happening to me (if you go back and listen to my first single ‘Kangaroos’ there is a pretty clear time jump when writing it that I get a kick out of) and so to go back and edit things lyrically would have been rather dishonest to how I was feeling at the time I wrote them. Musically speaking however I tend to be a bit of a menace and change things rather often to the dismay of my band.
Are you excited for the full EP to be released? Can you share any details about that?
Oh yeah for sure I’m beyond excited, more than anything I’m excited to get all these out there, I think these songs have been a pretty large emotional weight on me for a bit too long.
Details wise I can tell you that I’ve still got a couple more singles to put out before the record itself comes out. I’m also super excited to say I have a few producers and artists I really admire working on remixes for some of the songs. The only one I can announce write now is the Estelle Allen has cooked up something super cool for Kangaroos, and that is going to be coming out very soon!