The purpose built next generation interstellar Dawn Richard thread

OK, officially excited now. The last minute drags a bit with too much repetition (and the climactic build doesn't quite reach the peak of euphoria it should) but up until around the 2'30" mark this is bangin'

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Goddammit. Link: https://soundcloud.com/dawn_richard/dwn-renegades

this is great

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CuLoLYbUAAEBP0M.jpg

http://www.npr.org/2016/11/10/500998628/first-listen-d-wn-redemption

for the love of god please be very very very good; I'd appreciate it.

it is

oh thanks. i gotta wait another few hours to have the space but that's something to look forward to.

she's never really done anything like "la" before

it starts out as the expected inverse club-oriented album to blackheart's mostly introspective shapeshifting but on "la" it digresses pretty hard, and then again around "vines"

thank god for this record arriving when we needed it

Haven't been as excited about a new album and talking about it on here since this one.

yeah this is great on contact so far

This is so fucking good.

yeah, this is.

Compared to Blackheart? (I'm out and can't hear the stream yet)

I'm going to wait until next week, I have a feeling this is going to require more bass and sonic detail than an NPR stream is going to offer.

holy shit @ this

what the hell is 'LA' and how can we get it in pill form

It feels like this is the first time the weight wasn't so heavy, so the process was calmer, the pace was slower. I knew the Red Era would be a bit different because shit started happening in the world. Goldenheart and Blackheart were more personal

Lex just got a really nice shoutout on her iG

For this, I assume?
http://www.thenational.ae/arts-life/music/review-redemption-by-dawn-richard--a-defiant-statement-from-the-underground-dance-queen

Just listened to the first quarter of this stone cold sober and it pretty much made me want to chew my face off. The best Dawn has always been where she's combining junglist sensibility with gooey melodies and intense rushiness and all three elements are all over this.

Wasn't expecting the rock guitars on LA either but pretty much everything here works.

I <3 DR so hard

that is all

'The Louvr'e is astonishing, as is virtually the whole record. Only 'Hey Nikki' overstays its welcome, and that's one of the shorter tracks.

i endorse the repeated use of this product

The best Dawn has always been where she's combining junglist sensibility with gooey melodies and intense rushiness

http://i.imgur.com/EjQzLsA.gif

I'm using 'junglist' very loosely there, most of her records have at least one track when her vocals are playing off against skittering rhythms, none of this stuff is remotely jungle in a kpunk.xls way but there are a lot of drums that you can follow like their own melodic lines. Plus she's working with Machinedrum who was up to his neck in fake jungle a couple of years back.

can't we all just enjoy this record as clueless laypeople

seriously finding it hard to listen to this without going back and replaying LA over and over again. and that's no slight on the rest

this album is sick

TBH automatically equating rhythmic complexity with jungle would piss me off as well in a different mood. But I've been listening to 'Black Crimes' on repeat and what she does with the snares is less interesting than what she does with the kicks, the song goes through at least two changes of meter and its difficult to think of many four minute R&B songs that go through as many rhythmic permutations.

Her lyrics are markedly different to the last few records as well - a lot of the fantasy/comic book nerd stuff has gone straight in the bin.

Even as far back as "Black Lipstick" there was a pronounced jungle influence in some of her stuff.

Does Lex still post here? There have been a bunch of albums this year I wanted to hear his opinion on

Haven't heard anything since "Goldenheart" - I must be massively missing out. Excited to hear this!

The last two albums are way better than Goldenheart!

I think Goldenheart sounds a lot better now that she's moved on from it a bit and it can be enjoyed as a series of mostly great songs rather than her defining ~statement~. I'd rank it behind Blackheart and Redemption, but not by much.

just arrived at a bar but i am waiting outside until i finish listening to "renegades"

blackheart > armor on > redemption > goldenheart

Lol of course there's a VR component to this one.

Like, where does all the money for this shit come from? Surely one failed Danity Kane reunion doesn't bring in the $$$ and these expensive-sounding records don't exactly break even.

maybe sponsored by one of the VR headset companies?

When I interviewed her she said it was easier to find partnerships with companies doing super-new tech like VR that don't necessarily have the capacity to reach bigger acts themselves. The "Not Above That" video was done with VR Playhouse and I assume these were as well. (I don't think I get VR, you need a special headset to actually see it properly, right?) In general I think she's funded her music with side projects in design and animation rather than revenue from the actual music necessarily.

I had trepidation about the album but she really came through, I love that you can't even tell which songs are Machinedrum or Noisecastle on first listen. Everything she did with Kingdom got relegated to that self-contained EP (which like Whiteout is perfectly decent as a curio - Kingdom's beats are as boring as they've been for years but Dawn really came through melody-wise to elevate it). And as much as I love "Not Above That" and "Cali Sun" I think the idea of an album that sounded like Machinedrum ft. Dawn would have been disappointing - when I talked to her she said she was really conscious of that pitfall too. I think the sludgy '90s rock guitars on "Hey Nikki" and "LA" are kind of key in terms of not pandering to any audience, I love them but they're very uncool. Also I love that the most obvious influence of being on a London label is making an honest-to-god grime banger on "Renegades". The break!

Also love that far all the talk of this being a jubilant final chapter, the back half is as gloomy as anything she's ever made.

This is a very me comparison but honestly late '90s Tori Amos is a comparison that keeps springing to mind - in terms of out-there sounds and disparate styles in the service of an artist's idiosyncratic internal logic and self-contained universe, obviously, and also in the way she pushes her vocal range (digitally and otherwise) and also in the way she mangles enunciation (I heard this without a lyric booklet for a month or so and got so many lyrics completely wrong).

Lol of course there's a VR component to this one.

Like, where does all the money for this shit come from? Surely one failed Danity Kane reunion doesn't bring in the $$$ and these expensive-sounding records don't exactly break even.

Lol of course there's a VR component to this one.

Like, where does all the money for this shit come from? Surely one failed Danity Kane reunion doesn't bring in the $$$ and these expensive-sounding records don't exactly break even.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/nov/17/dawn-richard-r-and-b-dance-music-danity-kane?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

This didn't make it into the Guardian piece but I asked her about the bloody triangle and she was like I JUST WANTED PEOPLE TO STOP MANGLING MY SURNAME

great piece

Woke up early this morning so decided to blitz through the entire trilogy in order. I honestly think Redemption is the best of the three, even if the songs are relatively sketchy affairs - the tracks that are badged as interludes like "Vines" and "Lilies" are as fully fleshed out as, say, "Tyrants" and "The Louvre" (my two favourites right now).

Outtakes - or bonus tracks if you prefer:

https://soundcloud.com/dawn_richard/dwn-they-think-they-know

https://soundcloud.com/dawn_richard/dawn-stars

This record delivers in every way, so good.

I like it a lot, I need to listen some more because it's so fragmentary that I haven't really formed a cohesive sense of it. Songs are over just as they're starting to get going.

been revisiting the trilogy and i think i wore myself out on blackheart last year but jesus christ what an album