GAYLETTER

AYER is the moniker of Brooklyn-based musician and visual artist Danny Schmittler. Specializing in electronic music that places Schmittler’s gentle croon over beds of warm synths, plucking electric guitar, and pitch-shifted backing vocals à la Purity Ring, AYER makes the kind of music that works in the intimate privacy of your headphones just as much as it does pulsing over a bass-heavy sound system in the club. AYER’s latest single, “Digital Fantasy,” mines a trend that gets quite a bit of traction in the queer community these days: the relationship between technology and love, now streamlined and hyper-sexualized by the wealth of dating apps that have sprung up in the wake of Grindr, Scruff, Tinder, and all the other ones you pretend you don’t have on your phone anymore. Inspired by a Huffington Post essay titled “Why I’ve Given Up on Hooking Up”, the simmering track finds Schmittler begging for “something to feel, something that’s real” instead of the “beeping signal” that pulls him back into the realm of digital debauchery.

The music video for the clip, directed by photographer Rick Day and longtime collaborator Steve Benisty, hones in on different variations of sexuality in several corporeal forms: muscled shirtless sailors making out, a leather daddy crouches down, an everyday suit seductively undoes his tie. It’s all very erotic, in a Robert Mapplethorpe, simple kind of way (AYER even referred to Mapplethorpe’s photography as an influence in a recent interview). “Digital Fantasy” also marks the first time Day has shot a music video, so it’s definitely worth a watch if you, like us, are already a fan of his sharp, beefcake photography.

Watch the video for “Digital Fantasy” below: