Sufjan Stevens presents “Run Rabbit Run”

Okay, so it’s not really brand new music from Sufjan Stevens, but it’s something.

Before he released Michigan and Illinois and became the darling of the indie scene, Sufjan released Enjoy Your Rabbit, an album of abstract electronica inspired by the Chinese zodiac.

I’ve always felt that Enjoy Your Rabbit gets overlooked whenever Sufjan’s music is discussed, and I sort of understand why — it’s definitely the oddest, least characteristic album in the man’s oeuvre. But not only is it a delightful, whimsical album in its own right, but its influence can be heard in the electronic bleeps, bloops, and textures that drift through Sufjan’s other, more acclaimed albums. However, Enjoy Your Rabbit is getting a new lease on life this year, in the form of Run Rabbit Run.

A group of composers have rearranged thirteen of the album’s songs for Osso, a string quartet that played on Illinois as well as on My Brightest Diamond’s Bring Me The Workhorse. The rearrangements premiered at Bryce Dessner’s (The National) Music Now Festival in 2007 and will finally be released on CD on October 6 by Asthmatic Kitty Records.

To give you a taste of what could very well be in store for us come October, I’ve embedded two videos of Osso performing some of these new rearrangements.