New music for the one-track-minded…

Antony Hegarty, of Antony and the Johnsons, has released the track Cut the World, written for and performed in the biographical opera The Life and Death of Marina Abramović earlier this summer. In the video—featuring, along with Abramović, actress Carice Van Houten (Game of Thrones, Valkyrie) and Willem Defoe (because what conceptual piece is complete without him?)—the transgender, post-feminist, performance-art balladeer inveighs against patriarchal dominance in a quietly gruesome way. We won’t give it away, except to say there’s a bloody twist that gives a sense of denouement to Hegarty’s notions of gender politics and Future Feminism (notions which also inform the Meltdown music festival, curated by Hegarty and wrapping up this weekend). Where the video, gripping though it is, comes across a little moralistic and crusade-y, the song makes up for in sheer haunting beauty…