Blue Daisy doesn't do "light." The few singles that the London producer has released over the past two years have sounded anything but, with disjointed rhythms rubbing up against queasy tones and deep pockets of echo. Not that his music is joyless-- if you were captivated by 2009's collaborative single with French vocalist LaNote, "Space Ex", following the breadcrumbs he's dropped since has been a heady pleasure. But his music is geared toward dark landscapes.
Last year's single with vocalist and frequent collaborator Anneka, "Raindrops", featured a remix of the title track from Spanish psychedelic house wiz John Talabot; like most Talabot re-works, the remix was outstanding, but it also sounded as if he were forcing his own style on the original's liquid gurgles and irregular beat. Some in the UK beat scene work with difficult, self-set parameters-- Pearson Sound's brittle woodblock accents and Blawan's hard-as-nails acid patterns both immediately come to mind. But Blue Daisy isn't making music you can dance to. "I don't go clubbing that much... the club thing, it's not timeless," he says in the press notes for this release. "I'm making music for the long run, in 10 years I still want people to be able to listen to it... I'm not down with the idea of fitting in."
Accordingly, The Sunday Gift is about deep listening, with plenty to get lost in and little to soundtrack a night out. There are long stretches of unsettling ambiance, with jarring, harsh textures and sonic mayhem erupting from the album's foundation. The tension is made tighter by elliptical strings and distant vocal samples spouting vaguely threatening political klaxon language and speaking in foreign languages. The guest vocalists-- Anneka, Cinematic Orchestra collaborator Heidi Vogel, UK rapper Hey!Zeus, smoky singer Stac-- are treated less like stars and more like instruments in the mix, slathered in their sonic surroundings. For an electronic album from someone well-versed in beatmaking, the idea of rhythm almost seems secondary.
Comparisons to Massive Attack's unimpeachable run in the 1990s come immediately to mind, but The Sunday Gift feels a shade darker. A better comparison would be Tricky's debut, 1995's Maxinquaye, a record that contains its share of blasted dub and hollow-point production. Another quality Maxinquaye and The Sunday Gift share is anger, something in no short supply in the UK lately. The mix of sounds and sensations has a cumulative quality. Some albums work best as front-to-back listening experiences; The Sunday Gift practically demands such attention, flowing in a single-track style that makes skipping around to specific songs feel like walking into a movie in the middle. And the payoff comes in the form of the album's gorgeous closing suite, which includes the woozy house of "Spinning Channels". For a producer who made his name with a sporadic series of singles, Blue Daisy knows how to fill a larger canvas.
