Two singular voices from the avant-garde, Phew and Danielle de Picciotto, have announced details of their first collaboration, Paper Masks, set for release on 20 February 2026 via Mute.

Developing quietly over nearly five years, what began as an experiment between friends gradually evolved into a full-length album that fuses Phew’s electronics and vocals with Danielle de Picciotto’s poetry and voice. Phew composed and arranged the music at her studio in Japan, weaving the vocals that Danielle sent from Berlin.

Phew explains, “I made tracks without looking at the lyrics, just listening to her voice. I believe that the role of art is to evoke the power to imagine the unspoken, the unheard sounds. I don’t know if it worked. I made this album in the hope that it would create a butterfly effect in the world.”

Danielle de Picciotto goes on to say, “I started writing poetry at a very early age, I love language, stretching and kneading words into new shapes, especially as I grew up tri-lingial . Phew does this with sound and the thought of having my spoken word radically distorted was an invitation I could not refuse.”

Elsewhere on the album, de Picciotto’s German spoken word pieces intertwine with Phew’s vocals across immense soundworlds that speak of communication and dislocation. On tracks like ‘Der Verpasste Kaffee’, minimal passages give way to fierce electronic bursts, while on ‘Amnesie’ Phew and Danielle’s spoken and sung voices orbit one another, occasionally colliding with what feel like overheard transmissions. The processed voices on ‘Sugar Sprinkles’ disorientate as untethered vocals and electronics impact.

The resulting album is mesmerising, an exploratory work of intimate dialogue across distance, language, and sound, and a compelling addition to both these heavyweight artist’s catalogues.