Today, September 16th, Blood Orange released a single with Korean musician Park Hye Jin. The release comes after he featured on The Avalanche’s track earlier this year, and is accompanied by a DIY music video filmed on the streets of New York.
View this post on Instagram<LINK IN BIO> Blood Orange x 박혜진 @parkhyyejin Call Me Freestyle
Blood Orange has released a plethora of successful tracks and collaborated with a diverse set of names such as Tinashe, Toro y Moi, A$AP Rocky and Mariah Carey. His most recent collaboration with Park Hye Jin delivers everything from distorted vocals to a lullaby-like piano melody. When Park Hye Jin’s voice comes in, rapping over Hynes in Korean, the result is transcendental. The track is busy, but in classic Blood Orange style, all its disparate elements come together to form something beautiful.
Blood Orange, whose real name is Devonté Hynes, has been creating music since 2004. His first project was a dance-punk band called Test Icicles. When they performed live, Hynes, the bands guitarist and occasional vocalist, would writhe around on stage clad in dark clothing delivering grungy guitar lines.
He then left the band to pursue a solo career under the alias Lightspeed Champion. His EP Falling Off The Lavender Bridge was a collection of quirky songs with ‘well manicured strings and acoustic guitars’. Songs like Midnight Surprise had a Kooks like feel to them, all-be-it with far more unconventional lyrics.
In 2009, just after Hynes moved to New York, he decided to put Lightspeed champion on the back burner and focus on a new project. This would be far more R&B and electronic in sound. His debut single Dinner was produced with Chris Taylor from Grizzly Bear and epitomised the artists new direction. The bright synth pattern and percussive beat is foot-tapping and dreamy, reminiscent of 80’s electronica but more gentle.
The instrumentation in this track, and also in his 2011 debut EP Coastal Groove, is a world away from his work with the Test Icicles and as Lightspeed Champion. The upbeat rhythm of songs like Forget It and Champagne Coast give them a pop like feel that was never present in Hynes’ previous endeavours.
His second EP, Cupid Deluxe, was a solid album that displayed a musical comfortability which had felt lacking when Hynes was working under the moniker of Lightspeed Champion. In standout track Your Not Good Enough, Hynes’ breathy vocals work perfectly with the jazzy bass line and maracas. In the followup to this he wrote some music for the motion picture Palo Alto, his dreamy R&B style fitting perfectly with the hazy visuals of a Californian summer.
