The purpose built next generation interstellar Dawn Richard thread

yeah "phoenix" is def not the essential peak that "faith" was but it's less because it's tedder/sia-esque and more because it's not as undeniable a song. still works in context though.

i really want to include "tide" in the tracklist because it's just the most majestic thing ever, but it always feels completely sacrilegious to fuck with dawn's sequencing so i just can't.

god post-pinkprint and post-little red it feels so good to have an album that does the impeccable sequencing for you. dawn doesn't even make it complicated - crazy busy beats first, a period of calm, then the corny closing stretch, done.

"tide" (which i haven't really gotten into yet, but haven't listened to much either) and "physical" work well tacked on to the end of that for me

can't wrap my head around this at all but it's... incredible

People with vinyl! Is Tide a bonus at the end or...

This album! I'm trying to remember what day I get paid so I can buy it and let it ride roughshod all over every other album for the rest of the year. It's really the thing I needed right now.

listening to this on headphones is like going into a wormhole. i can't even begin to note down the details i'm blown away by because so many of them keep coming. the way "blow" holds back its electro riff til the final chorus...the tension as "adderall" transitions into "sold"...the moment she starts gasping on "titans"...the alien swamp breathing on "projection"...

Lol I found myself selling this to someone the other day like Kate Bush....Aphex Twin....Bjork ;_;

i was loath to go there with the björk comparison bc 1) it's kinda meaningless bc what does "björkish" even mean sonically, 2) dawn's been waving this influence at everyone for a while, but the vocal layering and weird clicky beats on "titans" and "projection" are really pure vespertine/medúlla-era björk

also can we talk about how dawn fucks around with her voice so much, and that sour snappy low voice she uses on "billie jean"!

I hear Prince's "Power Fantastic," Peter Gabriel's Passion soundtrack, none of the usual influences.

I'm not saying any of those comparisons were entirely apt.

also can we talk about how dawn fucks around with her voice so much, and that sour snappy low voice she uses on "billie jean"!

― lex pretend, Monday, January 26, 2015 3:07 PM Bookmark

This has been a hallmark to me since she started releasing solo material!

but not to the extent she does here - like, not just slathering on autotune like she's dressing up as imogen heap, but this huge range of what she does with her voice (both treated and how she sings)

I was thinking how damn PROG this record sounds and then you come and crack me up with a Passion of Peter Gabriel reference.

not just slathering on autotune like she's dressing up as imogen heap

this made me lol but is actually OTM about some of her earlier vocal tricks

i need to read more reviews of this album, it's literally been reviewed twice

workinonit

:)

Did you see this review, where the writer compares her to Cher--

After the recent reunion of Danity Kane and release of the band’s new album, it may come as a surprise to many that Dawn Richard is still pursuing a solo career. But listeners are in for an even bigger surprise as you soon realize that Dawn may be striving to be the new Cher of the Vegas strip but with an urban twist. Her new electronic-inspired alternative sound on her self-released album Blackheart is a huge change from what we’ve heard with Danity Kane and Dawn’s many features with artists from Bad Boy Entertainment.

...As a whole, the album is inconsistent. You cannot deny Dawn’s great vocal ability or the well written verses in the songs that do actually contain lyrics. The key to a successful solo career is establishing a definitive sound, so it’s a worry that Blackheart doesn’t have one. I wouldn’t call it an epic fail, but Dawn Richard could certainly do better.

http://fdrmx.com/dawn-richard-blackheart-album-review/

... what

The techno music leads “Calypso,” then Dawn’s hip-hop personality returns in “Blow.” This song, about the anticipation of success was somewhat confusing when being sung by an established artist like Dawn Richard. But when you factor in the heavy presence of instruments, digital sound and vocals, the song is pretty good.

This site doesn't have editors, I assume.

oh it's a student review, okay

C-

i didn't need to read that review, eesh

90% of dawn richard coverage in the past week seems to be about the danity kane punch-up and/or her plastic surgery or lack thereof, ugh

I can confirm that this is the perfect album for cross country skiing (which I suck at), just busting my ass through a beautiful snowy wilderness. Had to take on a big hill when "Warriors" came on. Killed it.

critics presumably saving their column inches for whatever insipid afrofuturism janelle monae drops in 2015.

::flame emoji::

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE

Mmmmhmm

If anyone wants to subsidize me holding forth "at length" about this album I am accepting briefs.

I only have boxers.

I have nothing.

i am prepared to enter into some sort of foreign undergarment hedging arrangement if you have appropriate collateral.

Nothing.

NOTHHIIIIIIIIIIIIING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19LPgLKrgLE

It's actually really frustrating because this album, while amazing, is also 100% on trend in virtually every way and hardly anyone gives a shit.

i wonder whether people might finally concede that an album's critical traction is 90% to do with the right PR people now

Got paid yesterday so I finally bought this album today, listening to it on the big speakers and WOW, like, so many levels to this thing.

I'm not even sure that it's about "the critical traction of an album being down to PR" so much as it is the way that... artists get *established* within certain narratives within the critical discourse. And Richard's narrative has solidified so firmly into "reality show artist" that it's impossible for most critics to even conceive of her on another.

Like, you can be a TV Star or you can be a Serious Artist, but it's impossible for you to be both.

(And even with the few, FEW successful crossovers - Girls Aloud? - the critical narrative is around the management, the production, Xenomania, etc. rather than their input.)

Listening to this album, I do kinda feel like, if something like "Swim Free" came out attached to an unknown name, it would have FKA Twigs level of "What... is... this... ASTONISHING artefact!?!?!?" narratives forming around it. But people have already decided what her narrative is, no matter what record Richard puts out.

it's an album that certainly deserves the accolades tinashe and twigs have received (2 records i also love a lot fwiw)

Oh yeah, I agree with that - ties into publication demographics too; vast majority of sites that have covered her are gossip/celebrity sites. And if she's in that world why would the critical community pay attention. ..

I love the Twigs album too but her image was critbait from day one.

wait why are we talking about Dawn getting shut out of critical discourse when her album was reviewed on PF and most major label R&B albums aren't? if anything her critical presence is far bigger than the impact her records have actually made.

If you consider "reviewed on Pitchfork" to be the sum total of "critical discourse", then I suppose...

In fairness it is pretty much all that matters to some people.

As I said upthread her albums seem to uniformly get good reviews but there's evidently no hype bandwagon building in the same way that it might be for an artist like Twigs with proper label backing, a promotional machine and minimal career baggage.

The fact that Dawn releases her records herself is almost certainly an issue here as well.

It's kind of a relief that the only place I ever encounter "these people" is on ILX.

I don't think people who are listening FKA Twigs and not Dawn Richard would even necessarily remember that Danity Kane were a thing let alone immediately associate Dawn with them or reality tv - a lot of those discourses run entirely separate from and oblivious to each other except at the most obvious points of crossover (Beyonce, Taylor etc.).

Dawn's challenge to find an audience doesn't strike me as one particularly unique to R&B, but rather has a lot in common with that facing many female artists over the past few decades. There's a quality of earnestness to her which I think can really impair a female artist's crossover chances absent popular success (or, alternatively, "one of the boys" style aggression or androgyny).

Lex's reference to Imogen Heap upthread got me thinking that the best thing that could happen to Dawn would be to have a "Hide & Seek" style viral moment - something that crossed over to an audience open to what she's doing while bypassing both the usual critical and commercial gatekeepers.

But even then the boost that created for Imogen's career was only relative.

...or she needs some kind of hit single that will work somewhat independently of her album or her persona. Asking people to take in a whole album to get an idea of who an artist really is feels like a tall order these days.

Sorry, skimmed Tim's post. That "viral moment" he is speaking of fits the bill. The thing with Dawn is that you need to create a feeling that the listener wants/needs to know more about her music. Taken as a whole there's just so much there that a lot of listeners will need a proper way in.

I'm on, like, my eighth listen of this album now, and I thought I'd be getting tired of it, but it's hit that "again, again, again" point where I don't want to listen to things that aren't it.

(I've got both Bjork and the lost Aphex SAWs sitting there, and don't want to go to them, want to go back to this album again.)

I dunno. Part of what's so *appealing* about this album is the cohesive *wholeness* of it. (Especially a relief after the unrelenting too-much-ness of Goldenheart.) Its sequencing is perfect, and more important, the *transitions* are amazing. Some of my favourite bits on this record are the supposed 'interludes' - like Titans into Warriors is astonishing, and then the slow, careful wind-down of the beat from Warriors to Projection is just... UH! Like, it's not *just* that the songs, individually are amazing, but the transitions, the liminal spaces between them are just so beautiful and perfectly planned out.

Like, this is what keeps making me think "prog" - it's not just the complexity of the music - those baroque harmonies! the technique of her arrangements is always, y'know WOW! - or the 'experimental' Aphexy sounds. It's the execution of Album Qua Album where you don't feel like you're listening to a collection of songs, you feel like you are listening to a self-contained suite, a symphony where each piece leads to the next. (This is far more noticeable now I'm not listening on Spotify with its awkward 2-second gaps between songs.)

i think my favourite transition might be one of the ones that isn't a transition, that actually marks one section finishing and another starting - the way "adderall/sold" DROPS into "swim free", it's vertiginous stuff. after how busy and head-spinning the first five tracks are, to suddenly be plunged into something as still and spare as "swim free" is, just, GASP

the transitions within "adderall/sold" are just spectacular build-and-release

SEE YOU IN MY HEEEEEEAAADD

this could be the album to unite us all