Dirty Projectors - Rise Above

The Getty Address by New York's Dirty Projectors was one of my bestest albums of 2005, it's choral/orchestral glitchy avant R&B was unlike anything heard before and still continues to surprise. September 11th 2007 sees the release of main man Dave Longstreth's latest DP masterpiece Rise Above. I hate to be the kind of writer (I'm a writer?) who just copy & paste's the press release but this is too good not to regurgitate:

Following the 2006 EP New Attitude, Longstreth went to help his parents move out of the house he grew up in. Among his youthful artifacts was the cassette case from the Black Flag album Damaged. This brought back all sorts of memories – Black Flag was one of Longstreth’s first loves – but the tape itself was missing. So, like the character in the Jorge Luis Borges story “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” who sets out to recreate Don Quixote line by line from memory, Longstreth went to the nearest Guitar Center, purchased the cheapest cassette four-track he could find, and embarked on recasting Damaged from memory, without re-listening to a single note or reading any lyrics. The ten songs that make up Rise Above (titled after one of the tracks on Damaged) stem from these four-track demos, recorded at his parents house on an acoustic guitar.

Load of Bollix? It would be if the album wasn't so jaw-droppingly beautiful and uniquely fucked up. Skittering beats? African Hi-life guitar? intricate 3 part girl-boy harmonies? If you haven't guessed already this sounds nothing like Black Flag. Here's the opening track:

Dirty Projectors - What I See mp3

which of course is nothing like:

Black Flag - What I See mp3

and while we're on the subject of Gregg Ginn's Hardcore legends why not watch the poop-inducingly funny video for T.V Party (unfourtunately not reinterpreted on Rise Above):



Rise Above will be released on September 11th on the Dead Oceans Label, please please please don't be silly enough to ignore it.

Dirty Projectors myspace

Dead Oceans

- RV.