In the relatively short history of Blogarhythms there haven’t been a whole lot of repeat performers. I think UK-based dancefloor-Pop quintet Hot Chip holds the record not only for actual features, but anecdotal mentions as well. Which makes perfect sense since they’ve been my hands-down favorite band for a few years running. After that I think Chicago-based rap-guy Serengeti comes in a close second, both feature and “blurb” wise. I mean, I mentioned him yesterday, and now I’m doing it again!
Today, UK-based singer, songwriter, musician and former Test Icicles member Devonte Hynes, doing business under the alias Lightspeed Champion, joins the ranks of the repeaters. It was a mere three months ago that I wrote a post big-upping his then newly-released Galaxy of the Lost EP on Domino Records. But now that the January 21st release of Falling Off the Lavender Bridge, the full-length album that EP was a teaser for, is closing in on us I felt it only right to talk him up once again.
I already told you the record was produced by Conor Oberst’s homie Mike Mogis and features musical accompaniment by a whole host of guest musicians from various Saddle Creek-affiliated bands, as well as guest vocals from British Anti-Folk songstress Emmy the Great (who, adds etheric depth to the album with her vaporous background vocals and show-stealing duets). I also remember explaining that the music Dev makes as Lightspeed Champion doesn’t sound anything like the loud, thrashing Punk/Metal mixed with crunchy Electronic of his former band, favoring a mellowed-out Alt-Country sound. Musically Falling Off the Lavender Bridge (which you can listen to now in it’s entirety on MySpace) is subdued and “pretty” in a way Test Icicles never could be. It’s also not the synthesizer-and-drum machine Electro-Pop album Dev’s futuristic new moniker might indicate. Instead, it’s a record full of richly-orchestrated, beautifully-melodic tunes that fuse the dirt-road twanginess of Country, the catchiness and sensitivity of ’70s “Soft Rock,” the foot-stomping anthemic qualities of Post-Punk and the rhythmic and thematic conventions of sad-bastardy Alt-Rock. But that’s the music. Lyrically it’s desperately emotional, embarrassingly personal, acerbically sarcastic and peppered with the occasional expletive.
As odd it as it may sound, Dev, as Lightspeed Champion, reminds me of August Darnell and his Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band project. Like Darnell melding Big Band and Disco in an attempt to elucidate the history of Dance Music and illustrate it’s power to heal the damage inflicted by a harsh society, Dev mixes disparate, even antiquated, sonic elements together as a backdrop for his own brand of brokenly emotive, post-modern songwriting. It takes things that, at face value, don’t belong together, things old and new, and makes them a platform for a voice that’s totally now, that speaks to today’s consciousness using the most traditional method of delivery for the depressed and downtrodden, Folk balladeering. It ties the past to the present and presages things yet to exist. I guess that’s what happens when you travel at Lightspeed?
– watch Lightspeed Champion “Tell Me What It’s Worth” (YouTube)–
-El Keter
