#blood orange

“Dev Hynes records his music with the windows open. You can hear the dulled urgency of a siren and the promise of more sirens. You can hear the neighbours. An errant screech. Ghosts and those who came before. A mother. Sweet greetings and voices chatting about the day’s complaints. Or the way a woman’s inflection – when she’s among her women – warms, gets real, plots, and receives affection. How her laugh means, “I love you.” You can hear pavement; chronic, comic car horns. You can hear a basketball; it sounds like a bass drum that sounds like a basketball, and so on. You can hear a saxophone; how solo and unescorted the saxophone sounds. Its noise, like loneliness next door. Its noise, like companionship just next door. What is it about saxophones that make them sound like fire escapes?

You can hear the city in the summer, at dusk. Because you can hear that, too – heat that won’t relent even as the sun begins to set. The echoing rhythm of whatever thoughts we keep to ourselves, competing with thick, thick air. You can hear muffled bass, confined to a car. The way some songs sound especially – the most – familiar when they are once removed. When you encounter them through a car pulled up to a red light. The way bass awakens us to the tension we hold in our chests. Or the joy that can spring from it, too.”

Interviewed Dev Hynes and wrote about his new Blood Orange album, Negro Swan, for Dazed. Photographs by Wolfgang Tillmans.

This year sucked in a lot of ways.  But the music helped me get through a lot of it.  Here are my top albums of the year, anecdotes and all- in no specific order.

*Kadhja Bonet - Childqueen

This is an album that you need a deep velvet fainting chair,  long silk robe and burgundy glass of wine while you listen to it on vinyl.  Her Thoreau-ian lyrics about the physical world and how they materialize into our emotional landscapes emote a sadness that soothes as it plays. Listen from start to finish, repeat. 

*Shygirl - Cruel Practice 

This album is like being chased through an underground club by a serial killer but when they catch you, you both just pop your pussy on the dance floor till 6AM. In a world where dance music feels all too the same, Shygirl’s album stands out.

*U.S. Girls - In A Poem Unlimited

By far my most played record of the year.  In a year for me that often felt as though my emotions and my actions were futile this album fit the bill.  IAPU is like if Kyley Minogue sang on Sgt. Peppers’ Lonely Heart Clubs Band in the 1980’s.

Favorite song L-Over.  “Can you imagine trying to get some satisfaction out of stone? One would have to wait their whole life and I don’t have time for that.” I fucking wish she told me this sooner TBFH.

*Smerz - Have Fun

This album sounds like whispering into a vocoder through gritted teeth to an old crush from grade school on the playground you first met.  It starts to rain on your jorts so you go home to download music on limewire over your dial up internet connection to burn them a CD.  You write “To:______ From:______” but hate your hand writing to so you have to burn a new CD.  You regret the time and effort spent so you microwave the CD and watch it burn.  The next day your parents ask why the microwave is broken and you just whisper “love.” 

*Boyboy - Boy

Hi, it’s me your local fag here to talk about representation and diversity in the music industry.  Growing up I had limited sight of LGBTQ in media.  Having always longed for things that were not “popular,” same sex pronouns in music, queer love stories.  This gives me a taste of what I needed. This album is like falling in love at a concert, you dance a little bit, make lots of eye contact and make a move and allow those butterflies to take over.  

*Kelela - Take Me_A Part, The Remixes

If you don’t know already it’s pronounced kuh-leh-lah. Get that shit right it’s nearly 2019.  TMAP got me through the roughest part of a break up and these remixes are here to remind you that men still ain’t shit.  Asmara was the executive producer on the album and killed it, each remix is a new interpretation or a beef up of the original. Features junglepussy, Cupcakke Joey LAbeija and Serpent with feet. 

*Blood Orange - Negro Swan

This album wasn’t made for me, but I appreciate its beauty regardless.  Hynes is an idiosyncratic genius.  PERIOD. 

“exploration into my own and many types of black depression, an honest look at the corners of black existence, and the ongoing anxieties of queer/people of color. A reach back into childhood and modern traumas, and the things we do to get through it all”

Negro Swan was a perfect example of art imitating life. Although this album very much is an affectation of our current climate, Hynes was able to create something with which the meaning will not be lost in time.  Every person regardless of race, sexuality, religion can find themes they can relate with on this gem.

*Tirzah - Devotion

Tirzah has the ability to say a lot without actually saying too much.  Her lyrics can be blunt but her instrumental cuts and loops help to soften the blow. Her loops and hooks drive home points that none of us are always able to say aloud, but with practice and repetition we speak it to truth.  

*Sophie - Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-insides 

If you think PC music is just beep boop beep (it can be), Sophie adds soul.  Each song on the album is different; from thumping club bangers like Ponyboy and Faceshopping to blissed out ballads like It’s Okay to Cry.  Although this album covers a lot of territory, it’s common thread is how beautiful it is to be human. 

*Beach House - 7

Like, duh.  Having been a fan of Beach House forever this album is a no brainer.  Upon closer inspection though, this album really stands out from the rest of the Beach House discography. Subtly darker, the instrumentation deeper at times and lyrics feel fed up with the ennui of their day to day-  Or maybe I’m projecting. 

*Ah-Mer-Ah-Su - Star

If you don’t already know Star, she’s a musician from the bay who already has some amazing EP’s under her belt.

The album covers lots of ground, from pop anthems like Heartbreaker, spirit lifting ballads like Powerful as well as being punctuated by vignette’s about moving through the world as trans, practicing self compassion etc.  

*Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour

Howdy.  Never in my life did I think I would chose to listen to a “country” album.  This album has the power to defy preconceived notions of what country is, while still remaining true to its roots.  This album is lyric gold, Kacey loves to speak in metaphor and is able to paint vivid pictures in under 3 minutes.  (NGL I started listening to this album under the guise that Kacey was a lesbian- although now I know otherwise the album still ~slaps~ and she’s a gay icon tbh)

*Suspiria - Soundtrack 

The marriage of music and film is a difficult one, to create an entire album that holds up as well as the movie is even more troubling.  Yorke always delivers. 

‘ORANGE GODDESS,’2020

paint and mixed-media collage on canvas

DEV HYNES INTERVIEWED ME FOR THE LAB MAGAZINE. SEE IT HERE: http://thelabmagazine.com/2014/08/22/malia-james/

frankbowers:

go here and let me know what your short term top artists from spotify (within the last 4 weeks) are in the tags!