Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Pop Matters | Music In Spotlight : 'Dark Days, Luminous Nights: An Interview with Vanessa Daou' — By Imran Khan


By Imran Khan


Vanessa Daou assumed her place on the dance music throne during the height of the cresting electronica scene in the 90’s rather reluctantly. The New Yorker’s music was never destined to be a staple of radio and, moreover, it required listeners to do two things at once: dance and think—two functions that don’t necessarily jibe well on a dance floor. Her heady brew of electronic beats and poetic implorations have both fascinated and mystified listeners alike; aiming at both the head and the feet, Daou’s music has never sought to be accepted as a genre defined by a playlist or the same marketing ploys used to sell lingerie. Instead, the singer spent her time and resources wisely, mining the library for books to feed and supplement her musical diet. Take Zipless (1995), her first solo outing into lounge-hopping culture, where she would spark the curiosity and desire of both the literati and club-goers. Zipless, her proper debut, was the congealed lava of still heated emotions, cooling slowly over the bedrock of smooth, percolating beats. The sonic dressing, courtesy of producer and then-husband Peter Daou, furnished the music with the sweaty, carnal atmosphere of two lovers locked in an overheated sauna and deliriously happy about it. At the core was Daou’s voice, a haunting, diaphanous whisper that divulged only the most clandestine secrets in the listener’s ear. Zipless was so over-the-top in its impassioned femininity and, yet, so understated in its approach and intent that you might have missed what was the album’s most sensual cue: Erica Jong’s erotic poetry, of which Daou’s lyrics were based upon. Her association with Jong alone made Daou the talk feminist circles amidst the album’s release; meanwhile, her tracks were doing time in the swankiest of underground cells, giving DJs a run for their wax and honey.

After the liquid fire of Zipless, Daou tuned into a lower frequency of sex, started reading again and discovered the lives of her muses on 1996’s Slow to Burn, a night out on the town in the lonelier corners of the heart. Bluer than Zipless but not as overheated with sexual magma, Slow to Burn showed listeners the right way a woman unwound for the evening hours—without a man and certainly without worry for it. Strange and fey feelings permeated the album and Daou, lost in the fog of deep regret and loneliness, ultimately essayed the personal triumphs of no longer being at the mercy and whim of a desired man. Her closing line on the album, “I’ll cross that bridge to you”, embodied the wisdom and spirit of a young woman finally learning the difference between simply having choices and actually making them.


After negotiating out of her major-label contract with MCA records following an internal shift of major players and talents, Daou opted to record independently and out of the ethers came the sex-in-space odyssey Plutonium Glow, released in 1997. A wondrous fusion of retro-electro beats, orbiting keyboard licks and dizzying sexploits, Glow took some of its inspiration from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince and fancied Daou a traveler through an emotional galaxy lined with debutantes, soldiers, lovers and hustlers. Transmitting from some strange universe of grandiose desires, the singer communicated all the pleasures and grievances of love in the long stretches of electronic reverb hovering in the mix.

Read full review @ PopMatters

'Light Sweet Crude | Act 1: Hybrid' makes top of 2013 list @ Pop Making Sense | Windy City Times

Many thx & much <3 to David Byrne for the inclusion in 2013's Best @ Windy City Times ~ I'm honored to be included........

XOV






"As another year passes, we saw noteworthy success stories, more mediocre music from certain pop stars and a return of beloved favorites in 2013. [...] I cannot pick just one album as a favorite. New releases from Vanessa Daou, Moby and Pet Shop Boys top my list."

Read full post @ Pop Making Sense | Windy City Times



'Light Sweet Crude | Act 1: Hybrid' holding steady @ Amazon's top Pop/Adult Alternative MP3 Albums

'Light Sweet Crude | Act 1: Hybrid' holding steady @ Amazon's top Pop/Adult Alternative MP3 Album


Link to Amazon.com

Wednesday, January 08, 2014

Light Sweet Crude | Act 1: Hybrid — Andre Baum



Light Sweet Crude, Act 1: Hybrid

 
My new album 'Light Sweet Crude | Act 1: Hybrid" started out as a personal journey, like my previous ones. But at some point along the way, one collaboration lead to another which lead to another, and so on. The idea evolved into a collaborative one, where the songs I was writing took on other shapes and meanings. New songs developed through these creative comminglings. ‘Light Sweet Crude’ has been very much like a spiral starting from one point, moving outwards and opening into a dynamic and complex formation.

Each producer comes from such a unique perspective. At the same time, there’s a commonality that runs through all of their music, a sonic connection which translates into a philosophical one. I love how these connections create a thread which runs through the album, and how their differences lead to an exciting asymmetry and disambiguation. In a series of posts, I'll be discussing each Producer, in alphabetical order…..........

________________________________

André Baum is a master at sonic synthesis. His library of sounds is vast - finding the slightest hum of a fan fascinating, André can turn what might seem like an ordinary sound into an audible sculptural form, giving meaning to what would otherwise go unheard. His work emphasizes the inchoate aspects of existence, the immense importance of listening, of hearing - and beyond that - of tuning-in to the world. André’s ‘sound’ is in and of itself a Thesis Statement, that the world we live in is alive sonically, oscillating and pulsing invisibly, reminding us that verything is waiting to be heard, listened to, uncloaked, decoded.

André & I share a fascination with sonics, sounds which evoke and suggest transcendent, nameless things. While producing "One Thing I'm Missing", André tuned into the core of the meaning of the song, a bluesy rumination on the theme of missing the one you love, and the blazing realization that beauty & the bittersweet often reside in the same psychological & sonic space. 

I love exploring new terrain with André who, like me, is always searching, pushing his own creative envelope into further liminal & untrodden realms. "One Thing I'm Missing" is a meditation on those unspoken achings which only music can express.

XVanessa



ONE THING I’M MISSING You're on time, I came early
Just to see if you’d keep your word
After everything I've heard
I'm surprised I still have faith
Your promise is so easy to break


Today was a beautiful day
There's just one thing that I'm missing
The bittersweetness of your kissing


You're the type to mix love with liquid
Stir it up into a troubling brew
Make me lose my way
Take the apple from the snake
A habit you taught me


Today was a beautiful day
There's just one thing that I'm missing
The bittersweetness of your kissing


Summertime, but nothing's easy
I'm out for Jazz and Cocktails without you
I hear fifty shades of blue
A color you’ve gotten me used to
And that’s when I realize


Today was a beautiful day
There's just one thing that I'm missing
The bittersweetness of your kissing


 .............................


Poetronics: Vanessa Daou's "One Thing I'm Missing"

By Imran Khan

A New York Times review of Chinese writer Can Xue’s work asserted that reading the author’s fiction is like “running downhill in the dark; you’ve got momentum, but you don’t know where you’re headed.”  Such a sentiment could be said of Vanessa Daou’s newest work; much of her recent explorations with club culture incite the chancy, dangerous thrill of experiment. Daou has already made a name for herself with her astonishing mix of spoken word and electronic beats on her six previous albums. Her voice, an eerie, peculiar sigh which brings a yielding and sensual warmth to her sultry grooves, is equally noted for its unbridled femininity. 
 

Not exactly an official single, “One Thing I’m Missing” is a taster for Daou’s upcoming release, Light, Sweet, Crude, an album that will delve into the further reaches of hip-hop and electronica after the heavily jazz-leaning offering of 2008’s Joe Sent Me. “One Thing I’m Missing” still trades on the downbeat tempos of her last album but fully engages in the atmospherics of digital paranoia, with icy sheets of synths layered upon a druggy, languid groove. Daou’s vocal, a strange, twisted call resounding from some Promethean netherworld, is essentially the hinge of which producer André Baum builds his rhythms upon, the cadence of his groove flowing with the awkward, elegant grace of a frozen river thawing. Sinuous, ghostly and poetic, this number heralds a return to Daou’s previous flirtations with DJ culture.  

 Read more & 'Like' @ PopMatters

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House Playlist: Lorde, Phantogram, Glasser, & Vanessa Daou



Vanessa Daou, "One Thing I'm Missing": Best known for a string of '90s club hits including "Near the Black Forest" (from her 1995 opus Zipless, which appeared on our list of the Best Albums of the 1990s), singer Vanessa Daou has dropped a trippy slice of chill-out called "One Thing I'm Missing," from producer André Baum's new compilation People People Volume 1, out now.

Read full post @ SLANT



Saturday, January 04, 2014

Light Sweet Crude | Act 1: Hybrid — 'Pop Making Sense' review


Pop Making Sense by David Byrne with Tony Peregrin2013-12-25

Blonde divas Britney Spears and Beyonce have new albums out to add to the year-end rush. "Perfume" and "Now That I Found You" dare to shed the overproduced dance sound Spears has been favoring. But she sings as if clothespins are pinching her nose and her tongue during "Work Bitch." The club-ready tracks—ike "It Should Be Easy," the mindless "Tik Tik Boom" and "Til It's Gone"—surely will give her extended live engagement in Las Vegas an extra jolt of energy. Just be mindful of cliche-plagued fillers "Passenger" and "Don't Cry" on Britney Jean.

[...]

On Light Sweet Crude ( Act 1: Hybrid ), Vanessa Daou puts her music into motion. "Revolution" has strings with a groove that the body cannot resist. On "Danger Ahead," Daou opens with spoken word as if at a beat club, then steps next door to a lounge once the slick electronic beat sneaks in. Love is many things.

Daou creatively illustrates the powerful emotion and then silences the opposition by unveiling love's universal definition on the standout "Love Is War" by singing, "Love is peace, love is war. Love is what we're fighting for." "One Think I'm Missing" finds her mesmerizing and breathless over a drawn-out, hypnotic beat. Light Sweet Crude never loses its groove or sensuality. Whether it is her vocal's timing, her phrasing of lyrics or captivating me in her music's rhythm, once again Daou is simply spellbinding. The self-released Light Sweet Crude and remixes to "Danger Ahead" are available now digitally.

Read full column @ Pop Making Sense