First Taste: New Blue Sun by Andre 3000
track-by track, real-time response and listening review on release day.
A little while back, a friend mentioned a new Andre 3000 album was coming out; today was release day. I made a point to listen to it first thing this morning, before reading about it online or listening to the fantastic NPR interview. I wanted a clean palate without expectations and very little information to allow myself to form my own opinion about the experience with no spoilers.
This write up is full of spoilers, so if you don’t want that, stop reading.
New work: The Blue Notes, 20” x 20” original fabric gesture by rosy petri
TRACK LIST (and real-time response)
1. I swear, I really wanted to make a rap album, but this is literally the way the wind blew me this time,
Sound: breath, antler/hoof jingles, synth flutes. Everything in conjunction somehow sounds like the bubbling of a slow brook, becomes dissonant and circles around the room in the same way Alice Coltrane’s works do, with repetition of phrases and themes. 12 fucking minutes. This man opened an entire concept album with a 12 minute flute song, and it’s perfect. (*Interestingly I had this experience of the music before listening to the NPR interview where Andre discusses the influence John Coltrane had on him, and how he couldn’t wait to share this album with Pharoah Sanders, who passed away before he had the chance.)
2. The slang word pussy rolls off the tongue with far better ease than the proper word vagina, Do you agree?
I’ll have to come back to write about this one, because the title threw me so hard I had a difficult time regaining my consciousness about the listening experience. I’ve only listened to the whole album once, and I’m emotionally exhausted from the ride.
3. That night in Hawaii when I turned into a panther and started making these low register purring tones that I couldn’t control… shit was wild
Sound: Tonal flute, basey drum, trance beat… indigenous vibes, wooden percussion sounds with a lot of space in a longer-than-usual song. The combination of audible respiration with the tonal flutes brings the feeling of multiple voices– you can hear him working, but also calling something ancient in with exhalation and heartbeat. Seed bead rattles, antler or hoof jingles, with breath that whips like the wind. This song is clearly drugs.
4. BuyPoloDisorder’s Daughter Wears a 3000 Button Down Embroidered
This famous rapper just created an arthouse electronic noise song in 2023. With the flow of all the other songs, this one feels especially stimulating and (at times) a little overwhelming. Full of boop-beep staccato tones, it showcases an experience of wind instruments in a way that is not conventional. I’m not sure if there’s a theremin, but there are plenty of rattles with the boop-beeps and undulations. The digital wind instruments and the sounds layering to create droning howls… Andre’s very aware of the impact of pacing shifts, and is masterful in building subtle crescendos of “now.”
5. Ninety three til infinity and Beyonce this one feels digitally crowded, techno soft percussion and layers of murmurs. Surprisingly slow tempo for the amount of body in the track, and comparatively short in relation to some of the other tracks. It’s 4 minutes long, giving you just enough time to brace for the next track.
6. Gandhi, Dalai Lama, your lord and savior J.C./ Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy starts out with what seems like temple bells tolling, builds up an electric anxiety repetition, more dischord, disorienting vibes. (I wonder if his role as psychedelic rock mystic Jimi Hendrix has anything to do with this album?) Serial killers and religious figures, tolling bells and rolling cymbals, rain sticks, vast landscapes of despair…. Minor keys reminiscent of horror movie soundtracks. Lonesome wailing vocalizations that could be a call to prayer or a cry of anguish. Somehow, this sounds like the feeling of a very bad trip.
7. Ants to you, Gods to who? A more mellow start, back down to earth and a relief after the last track. More gentle, more major, and more note bending. Asks the listener, in a way, for cosmic perspective. Drifting in a galactic tugboat toward the vast horizon. This one is the start of the denouement, and a gentle come-down from the psychological anxiety of the previous song.
8. Dreams once buried beneath the dungeon floor slowly sprout into undying gardens
This is clearly the end: we’re being invited to to consider the journey, and to integrate what we’ve learned. The pacing of the album requires front-to-back, uninterrupted listening experience to create a container and context. It follows the formula of a “successful” psychedelic healing experience: The slow introduction and transition between this world and the cosmic one (tracks 1 and 2), the reality of when the medicine takes hold (track 3), the psychedelic experience of facing your finite humanity (tracks 4, 5, and 6) the aha moment of becoming one with the universe (track 7) and the release of crossing the threshold back into ordinary time. Track 8 is the comedown, releasing us gently back to here and now.
I’ll be writing a more personal follow up about why this matters soon. 10 of unexpected 10.
-rosy
New Blue Sun is 84 minutes of intergalactic time travel, spiritual jazz and a whole ASMR album all in one. The album progresses like a heavy psychedelic trip, with so much of the spirit of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders’ “Journey to Satchidananda,” which happens to be one of my favorite albums. Channeling spiritual jazz and sonic sankofa, “New Blue Sun” is the perfect album to regulate to in times of despair: this shit is distilled and transcendent. I think listening to this album at night in real time with headphones and some good weed while painting might yield excellent results.