The physical form of dragonchild's debut is a vinyl 4-LP set, titled BLACK, containing a single 20-minute piece of music revealed when the four albums are played simultaneously. This physical release imagines a vinyl record as an art piece, with photography by Ethiopian photographer Michael Tsegaye, depicting a lava lake in the Afar region of eastern Ethiopia. Each vinyl record is translucent, with music on one side and an engraved topographic map of the lava fields on the reverse.
You can’t really listen to “BLACK,” but you can perform it. First, of course, you will need four turntables, and a space to set them up. (The album includes a diagram showing optimum placement.) You will also need three accomplices, so that all four tonearms can be dropped at once. “Debo,” the name of DA Mekonnen’s previous band, is an Amharic word meaning “communal labor”; to truly experience “BLACK,” you need a community, too.
This is a beautiful and audacious project: an artistic landmark, and an important addition to the long history of African-American cultural exchange.
Includes unlimited streaming of dragonchild
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A love song, better yet, a longing song to everything you miss, to the loves that made you, you. The production is inspired by the under-appreciated period of instrumental Ethiopian music released on cassette tapes during the 1980s often featuring loads of delayed sax and synths and saturation, warm and round.
credits
from dragonchild,
track released March 9, 2023
Produced by Seth Manchester & DA Mekonnen
Recorded & mixed by Seth Manchester
Additional recording by TJ Wenzl
Saxophones and keyboards by DA Mekonnen
Unlike any other. Its feel is both reflective and down to earth, and the compositions are easily differentiated despite their relative shortness. Not only a pleasure to listen to, this album is rhythmically complex, but not in a maddening, hard to process way. Also, very clever album title. ianjworsomething
Just the kind of gentle soundtrack I need when I am doing simple repetitive manual tasks. Impossible to decide on a favourite track because they are all wonderful. Jeremy Cherfas
Freestyle hectic jazz that soars and plummets and goes on weird dixieesque diversions, or gets stuck on an idea and plays it like a mental tic. Aggressively polite, overly welcoming and carrying an edge. Tom Colquhoun
The earliest recordings from celebrated trumpeter, composer, producer and DJ Matthew Halsall get remixed and remastered for vinyl. Bandca...mp New & Notable Nov 21, 2019
The shape of punk that is. The future is now! Open the Gates is the great conflagration of the past to act as a voice of hope in the darkness. Robby Morgan