Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome to at First Listen, the music podcast for people
who don't always get the hype but want to. I'm Andrew,
I'm Dominique.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Today we're talking about Blood Orange, the song somewhere in
between from his upcoming album Ssex Honey.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Yeah, Blood Orange and dev Hines are the same thing.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
WHOA I thought that, but you know, as I was,
as it was coming out of my mouth, I was like, oh,
maybe this is a collective of some kind.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah. I think it's like a project more than anything.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
And so the hot thing to do right now is
a project.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yes. Well, I mean he's been Blood Orange for as
long as I can remember, but he also dev Heines
at the same time. I think like he's sometimes he's
dev Heinesh's when he's like producing somebody else's thing.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
You know, is there an album somewhere that's under his
given name?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Don't know the answer to that question.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Okay, what do you know about this guy?
Speaker 1 (01:19):
He is? So he's like indie indie darling, indie rock
guy of you know, like the two thousands indie era,
and but he's kept it going and like stayed current.
So he produces everything like he's a producer really and
(01:43):
he so he like plays all the instruments pretty much.
He plays all the instruments and does all the production
on all of his music. Yeah, he's from He's from London.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
That British accent.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Come coming along, It's coming along East London.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
You know, I had no idea. I think there was
some tells that maybe he was a British person. Number one,
the art for this shows a young person in what
looks like a school uniform, classic British thing.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, very and it's like.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
And also and also the word essex in the album
title that helps signals British.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It's definitely something a different vibe if an American artist
puts like a ten year old in like a a
tie and a button up shirt and like names it's
picture day, Yeah, exactly exactly. Oh he's in band or something. Yeah,
he's in the choir. So yeah, he's one of the
(02:49):
secret secret British people because he's lived in New York
for a long time. He's lived in the US for
I don't know where he lives right now, but I
did see him once at a cafe. Oh cool, and
he's collabed.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Great place to see an artist you like, at a cafe.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
It's true. It's true. He was on a date. It
looked like a date, gave date vibes, but I that
was years ago.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Did it look like he was doing well?
Speaker 1 (03:13):
He did.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
He did seem to be, because sometimes when you see
people on a date, you're like, eugh, no, he was.
This should not be happening in public.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
No, it might have not even been a date. They
might have been friends, but it was. They liked each
other for sure, you could tell. Yeah, but he So,
he's always been really inspiring to me as an artist
because he kind of it seems to just always be
about the art and like creating a vibe as well as,
(03:42):
you know, just making the music. Like I always really
liked his visual aesthetic. Very New York honestly, and I think,
you know, I've never been to London, but there's probably
a lot of cultural crossover there.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yeah. I actually just saw a friend a couple of
days ago who just came back from his first trip
to London, and he was he said, it's like in
New York. I don't like it that much.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
It seems like it's like a new familiar that's like
wet more even more wet and rainy. And uh, the
food isn't as good I hear. I know the food's good,
but from what I've heard, it's just not in my.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Nine or ten day experience of the food. In England
and Scotland you can get good food. The average food
is bad.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
That's exactly, and that and that and that's the difference
with New York is go get a really you can
get a slice a pizza that's super solid for a dollar.
You can always also get a really bad bacon, egg
and cheese for five dollars. But like no, but I imagine.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Just like where's the mean food? Like the average Like
in Italy the average is very good.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah, most of Europe, I think that's the thing. Most
of Europe you can like eat just norm like just
grocery store food, and it's like pretty good and cheap.
And in London specifically it but probably you know, most
of the okay, but London specifically it's like very expensive.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
And also like so you can't blame Blood Orange for
moving here, No.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Not at all. And no, and I really I really
like the song.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Do you want to play a little Yeah, let's play
a little clip of it. This is the song somewhere
in between I would describe it as all jazz.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Yeah, I would call it that and this, And that's
also what I like about him is it's always like
a fun, little wacky surprise of what it's gonna sound like.
I wouldn't call like all of his tracks all jazz.
Some of them would be more indie rock, some of
them will be more hip up R and B vibes.
But I think that's really cool thing about him playing
(06:08):
all of the instruments is that he's able to just
like be like, yeah, I'm gonna put a melodica on
this one.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, that was the first thing I picked out. I
was a melodica. So I looked at the credits of this,
and he is the only credited songwriter or maybe it's
the only credited performer, which he's not, And he's not
credited as for like individual instruments. So I'm curious to
(06:41):
know if maybe this was all made in the box,
as they say, in a digital audio workstation. But either way,
it's impressive, whether he's playing the instruments physical instruments or
programming them, because this is a beautiful sounding, really warm,
almost analog sounding track. And the thing about doing jazz
(07:04):
is that it it if you're if it's not really
your thing, it comes across as a person who's imitating jazz.
And this sounds legit to me. It sounds like there's
a band that I love. The drum sound he got
it's very roomy. Again, if this in twenty twenty five,
(07:27):
you probably can make these sounds all on a computer,
and if you're really good at mixing, you can make
it sound good. To me, it sounds like it's a
real drum kit.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
I mean he plays tons of instruments and so and yeah,
he's known for playing all of these instruments. I imagine
it is, you know, a mix because he like he
probably record.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Probably he doesn't have a melodica.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
He probably does now that I like think of. He's like,
he's like you can definitely see a inspiration from like
Slice Zone with all of the instrumentation and using that
with digital you know, software combination and then like just
being creative with it. I feel like he's totally the
(08:14):
type of guy if it's like, if you had the
money and the space, you would have every dumb instrument.
He probably has a their man. He probably has like
some you know, he probably has two five melodicas like
I see that for him for sure.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
There's also a saxophone solo in this song, which, again,
if this is him, that's incredibly impressive. I mean being
able to play like a piano, a guitar, bass, that's
one thing, but to also be able to play a
read it's very lush, pretty warm.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
So a full ten or sex.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Does he played? He performed live, so he does.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
I've I think I've seen him do a DJ set,
So I imagine it is like he records these tracks
and he like.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Bos probably not not probably not what I would.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Want to see, Yeah, but I don't know. I imagine
there's a range of things we'd have to we'd have
to look at it.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
It would be cool. I don't know why I've never
seen anyone do this, probably because it's not my thing. Uh,
just in general, like that scene. But like if you
are a DJ producer type but also a real musician,
like when you're playing one of your songs, might not
like have a keyboard there, and like I think he does.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
I think he does cool. I think he does. And
obviously he's singing and he's like front manning. I'm coming
up with this stuff in my mind, but I imagine
that there probably are shows where he books like other
musicians to play those parts or and certainly like live drummer.
How hard is that? Yeah, you know this.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I don't know what the rest of the album sounds like,
but this song would really feel good with a real band,
a real combo of some kind on stage.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
That would be really cool. I yeah, I was. I
wanted to pick a song from him that I thought
would like stand out, I guess in his new work,
and I thought, I just felt like this one did.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
And the other thing that I thought was nice was
in the pre release for the album. Like most of
the times, when an artist has a single that is
coming out before an album, you can look at the
album on a streaming service and I'll have all the tracks,
but they'll be like Gray and he has that, but
all the tracks are nameless. Oh okay, it's just like one, two, three,
(10:56):
somewhere in between five six seven, and then the other
single that came out so like Lord, I think, yeah,
So it's like we don't even know what the songs
are called, not that they would mean anything, right. I
always think it's weird when someone releases their track list.
I guess it's an easy post to make. But I
even heard these, I.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Don't know, yeah, like what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (11:19):
I think, oh my god, there's a song called the Whoa.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
I can't wait for this. No, you have to be
like an insane super fanticare or just a person who
needs to post something. As you said, there's probably one
hundred news news outlets Instagram pages that use that for
a post as well. But I on that note, my
hunch is that he seems like he's very smart with
(11:45):
his like ownership of his music. To me, it seems
like there's a reason that it's blood Orange and dev
Heine's on everything, and it's because he owns everything he
does and like anything that that's his own music. He's
the producer. He doesn't have to share his credits or
(12:06):
his royalties with anyone. And it I wonder if like
it just seems like it can comes through in the music.
Like you were mentioning the transitions being weird.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Oh yeah, at the beginning and end of this track,
there are these trails that are clearly from the the
tracks on the on that before and after the song
on the album, and it's you get like a big
taste of it, like the last thirty seconds of this
song somewhere in between is right, So that has nothing
(12:52):
to do with.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
The song we just heard, right, And I my thought
is that that's just a creative choice as as like
the type of artists that I am, I also like
to leave in those like kind of weird accidents that
happened that you're like, oh, this is kind of fun
and funky and weird, like you know those.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
It seems like a relico like CDs, Yeah, where if
you wanted your album to flow really well, you would
preload a little bit of the upcoming track at the
end of the current track just so the little space
between them wouldn't be so jarring. But it never quite worked.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah. I think I think it's just him being like,
He's like, I I feel like doing this. I think
it sounds cool, and I mean.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
I were DIY yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
I love a little sloppy TIY vibe and I think
he does as well. And that's like, that's the freedom
you get in producing all your own stuff, and that's
why he does silly things like posting the album but
without a track list or anything. I feel like it's like, well,
you have to. If you want something on Spotify, you
have to like put it up in advance, but you
(14:10):
have to. But he doesn't necessarily want to, so he's
he just like it's doing his own weird little things
all over the place, and I love it.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
That's good for him. That's the one thing about not
having a band. There's no other input, so you can
just get as weird with it as you want. So
good for you, Blood.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Orange, Yeah, Dev exactly. Dev No. Like, I was really
pushing to have our cat Lumpy do a vocal solo
on our EP a Moni Gold's EP, and ultimately our producer,
April she cut it out clearly. You know, we needed
(14:52):
something to tie all those songs together, and that would
have been our cat. But April is like, it sounds
annoying and.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
It's not on any pit and I'm allergic.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Yeah, that was our first listen.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Tell us about yours on Instagram at at first Listen
podcast on Instagram. Dome. You know your show is your
show already happened when this came out.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
When this comes out, I think so.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, So catch them catch them next time next time.
That all right, Thanks everybody.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Bye,