The purpose built next generation interstellar Dawn Richard thread

this record is very weird

on itunes btw

thread of brad encountering difficulty in publicly appraising his new friend's record :)

Dawn Richard / NEON retweeted
Jason Lipshutz @jasonlipshutz · 5h 5 hours ago
Imagine Animal Collective following "Sung Tongs" with a warm R&B album. That's what this @DawnRichard album sounds like. Unreal.

i've never had such an enjoyable time having difficulty digesting a record

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FszEaxrHGTs

right, now it's out there

1) i was so relieved because post-goldenheart everything seemed to be going a little awry: goldenheart itself didn't get any traction, the original blackheart lead singles were ok-ish but also pointed to dawn disappearing into her own mythology somewhat (also forgetting to write songs), the danity kane detour was a shambles even if the album was surprisingly excellent

2) blackheart's greatest accomplishment is probably the way it pulls itself out of the threatened dead-end, not by abandoning that mythology but by transforming it. it's so unexpected in the way it contrasts to goldenheart - light where GH was heavy, in permanent flux where GH was monolithic, shape-shifting where GH was implacable

3) still not over the beats, and how many ideas there are in them, and how restless they are, and how their constant shifts add to the feeling of instability, and how much she abandons traditional songcraft to let them tell the story

4) impeccably sequenced imo - opener jolts you upright, then one-third crazy busy electronics then one-third floating calm then one-third home stretch of obviousness

what the fuck is 'calypso'?! so amazing.

GET THEE RIGHT / GET, GET THEE RIGHT

"blow" sounds a gazillion times better than it did as a single - a new mix i think? it pops a lot more.

if "adderall/sold" is the album's grandiose centrepiece, "swim free" is probably its beating heart

"billie jean" reminds me of jojo's last mixtape, and they've worked together since...

yeah "blow" works so much better within the context of the whole record

well this and Reality Show are gonna be distracting me from last year overflow in a big way.

my characterization of it as "weird" last night is bc at the listening party last night she played basically all the craziest tracks in a row, plus both interludes for some reason. (she's incidentally very proud of "projection" and talked about how she was just listening to patches and drum sounds for like weeks in a row, and you can tell, it's soooo obliquely funky.)

i also feel v emotional about "warriors"

I bought this last night right when it became available :) and she tweeted something about it scoring high on iTunes charts? hooray! can't listen until tonight though ugh

i predict u love it fgti

how was the listening party! was it well-attended etc.

it's strange, despite the almost wholesale abandonment of conventional song structure and only a few token concessions to the idea of pop, this is SO much more immediate than goldenheart

like i think it took me 3 months with goldenheart to get to where i am after a week-and-a-half with blackheart

for a small studio it was kinda packed. we also watched the video for "tide" before hearing the record; apparently "tide" is on vinyl copies of the record. also i got there early and she was just playing goldenheart tracks through these enormous speakers and man isn't "86" the most crushing song

dawn is supremely nice

it's strange, despite the almost wholesale abandonment of conventional song structure and only a few token concessions to the idea of pop, this is SO much more immediate than goldenheart

i was going to say exactly this

Getting strong Bjørk vibes from a couple of these tracks.

oh yeah that's right, dawn also described herself as "a girl from new orleans who grew up loving bjork"

yeah björk definitely came to mind at several points. i think vespertine-era most? it's quite difficult to pinpoint what i mean by "björkish" though

Getting strong Bjørk vibes from a couple of these tracks.

― longneck

Yep. "Billie Jean" plays as if Bjork had a go at the MJ concept.

it's the way these details sort of...bubble up out of the mix, the way the beats breathe. maybe it's actually medúlla-era björk, the shifting wonkiness of the beats and the organic feel?

is "billie jean" retelling the MJ story from her perspective? the narrative seems to obliquely nod at it but never makes it explicit

essentially it's a meditation on the mj idea of groupies from the perspective of groupies so yes

djp needs to hear this record immediately btw

Bjørk ca Homogenic - Vespertine I guess. It does make me wish she had hits like Bjørk to build on though. It would have made it so much easier to sell this to a wider audience.

omifuckinggod "Adderall"

speaking of MJ, "Adderall" is like "Morphine" on ludes.

Excited for this.

that last minute or so of "warriors" *heart eyes emoji*

OH MY GOD THE WOODWIND SECTION IN "PROJECTION"

Jealous of your listening party situation Brad
Fuck what I'm doing I'm going home and putting this on

was breakfast-sandwich late to work this morning thinking I could just listen to a little bit on spotify before I left the apt

"Projection" just wrapping up now. Mildly disappointing first listen so far. "Goldenheart" was ace after ace of indelible melody, felt like it transcended space/time/genre convention. So far this sounds like some great production ideas coupled with a lot of unedited vocal improvs

Ooh that flute solo tho

But all the hookiest tracks on "Goldenheart" ("86", "Pretty Wicked Things", "In The Hearts Tonight") were early favourites, which gave way to the subtler stuff. Not gonna give up

OMFG this album.

I want to hug someone.

So far this sounds like some great production ideas coupled with a lot of unedited vocal improvs

was my initial fear but it really coheres on further listens

Holy shit this album.

Listening to "Swim Free" right now and I just. Dawn. Wow.

On my second play now and this is already way, way better than Goldenheart and for that matter better than any album I heard in 2014. I still feel like the last album was a slog and frustratingly linear whereas this one is so much lighter on its feet, full of twists and turns and sonic surprises around every corner.

I don't know what I expected from 'Calypso' but it certainly wasn't Moby's 'Go' as remixed by the Aphex Twin with hyperactive Robodawns skittering everywhere. I can probably do without 'Blow' and 'Billie Jean' but the 'Adderall' -> 'Projection' stretch is just astonishing, every song has a moment about two-thirds of the way through when it brings in a new melodic element that just slays you emotionally and yes 'Swim Free' is amazing. The whole section is proof that Dawn is at her best when she's at her most gooey.

How did Dawn with all her massive comic book guy nerdery get this far through her career and only JUST get round to writing songs called 'Titans', 'Warriors' and 'Castles'? Also is that an actual chopped-and-screwed Jimi Hendrix voice lurking in the mix during 'Castles'?

By the time you get into the final stretch you feel like Dawn has actually earned herself a massive fake-Sia Furler thud like 'Phoenix', but even that's full of interesting sonic details, and I love how it teases you with the military drums and waiting until the final go round before whacking them in for the chorus. Also 'The Deep' is just gorgeous, those Strawberry Fields organ sounds that come in towards the end! And it's not an exact fit but those chiming pentatonic synths in the outro do actually remind me a bit of Aphex at his most self-consciously pretty actually.

There's just so much going on here. It's a much more fitting successor to Armor On and a much better fit for the "R&B Hounds of Love" claim Lex made before the last album.

goldenheart's pacing kinda sinks it for me, i heard almost all of it out of order last night and was like "i love this song! i also love this song! man i should go back to this" and still have trouble getting more than a few tracks in

Yeah I agree that Goldenheart's individual parts suggest a record that is much more captivating than one's memory of listening to the entire thing tends to be.

Although this doesn't necessarily map onto the question of which album is better/worse, I feel like Goldenheart was very "essence of Dawn", which is part of why it feels so monolithic (in ways that can be experienced as a positive or a drawback).

Whereas (and this is very early days for me so usual caveats apply) Blackheart feels more relational, Dawn drawing on all of these ideas and approaches from outside of herself and then feeding them through the matrix of her stylistic/thematic concerns.

It also feels like maybe the first album that deliberately sets out to deconstruct R&B from the inside (this is a bold claim I reserve the right to abandon later).

I'm also idly wondering if 'Beyonce' might have emboldened Dawn to really go all out for these textural multi-part epics as well.

i really wish i'd had time to set up an interview etc, i'd love to know how this album changed shape over the years - we know she'd conceptualised it pre-goldenheart, presumably intending to make the entire trilogy with druski. then when that fell apart she looked like she was ploughing ahead anyway with "judith" and "valkyrie", then aborted that for danity kane...so how much of this was written pre-DK, how much during DK and how much in the last couple of months? aundrea's presence on "phoenix" suggests that one probably came out of the DK sessions

though it didn't involve any of the DK producers?

(production credits: "castles" by swagg r'celious, everything else noisecastle iii & dawn richard)

a quick google: swagg r'celious hitherto best known for working with K MICHELLE! and deej's beloved kehlani