Blood Orange, aka Devonte Hynes, is an extraordinary artist. Prolific, versatile and with a gift for songwriting and music in general, it's largely not known that he originally came to notice as one of the indie noise rockers Test Icicles, who released one album back in 2005 before he became Light Speed Champion, purveyor of extraordinarily melodic and infectious indie pop nuggets that brought him a degree of success. Since moving to New York (he was actually born in America) towards the end of the noughties, he's been developing a lucrative career as a both a songwriter with others (Carly Rae Jepsen, Solange Knowles, FKA Twigs, Kylie Minogue, Sky Ferreira etc), and as an artist in his own right under the Blood Orange moniker. He is forever exploring his music as art and statement, often delving into the world of drag queens and homeless gay teenagers over a skeletal, alternative take on 80s pop-funk with hints of Prince here and there and r'n'b with almost no sign of the previous sounds and styles of Test Icicles/Lightspeed Champion. Now he is a 'committed cultural citizen', working within the mind-boggling plurality and diversity of New York City, but also reaching out to his African/Caribbean roots, as well as his British upbringing.

Women also feature very prominently in his music, as they did on his debut as Blood Orange, Coastal Grooves, which was largely written from a women's perspective. Women were also prominent on Blood Orange’s sophomore album, 2013’s Cupid Deluxe, with the likes of Chairlift's Caroline Polachek and ex-Friends vocalist Samantha Urbani. And now Freetown Sound, an album that Hynes says is for "everyone told they'e not black enough, too black, too queer, not queer the right way, the under-appreciated." It also derives its name from the capital of Sierre Leone, the birthplace of Hynes' father. Unsurprisingly, the album is highly personal, with religion, sex, sexism, femininity, masculinity, religion, and politics strewn over its 17 tracks. Compiled in a mixture/collage fashion, with short field recordings/samples/spoken word interludes in-between and within the actual songs, coalescing with strains of r'n'b, electro-funk, jazz, street-folk and 'world' percussion, this being the musical backdrop for a series of female singers (as well as Hynes) to enrich the songs in both predictable and unpredictable ways. Freetown Sound features established stars such as Debbie Harry, Nelly Furtado and Carly Rae Jepson, as well as a batch of emerging singers such as Empress Of and Kelsey Lu. Hynes has talked about preferring to work with female singers, saying that not only does he often prefer their voices, but that they can impart a particular power that "men just can’t.”

Almost right from the off there's the recorded voice of Missy Elliot, delivering a high voltage speech about the positive effects on the body image of women of colour. This, along with samples of voices talking about identity – race, gender, politics – and excerpts pulled from Paris Is Burning, a 90s documentary about the New York drag scene, colours the multi-cultural, multi-gender and multi-racial collage of sounds and textures throughout. Songs segue into street recordings, samples and into each other with the overall effect alternating between bustling cacophony and more straight forward ‘pop’ moments that are contemplative, downbeat even.

With Freetown there are tonnes of ideas, fragments, grooves, beats and textures, the pieces attempting to work as one whole piece, albeit constantly shifting and moving around in documenting the alternative and bohemian aspects of life in The Big Apple. Warped keys, the sounds of the city, the passionate voice of Missy Elliot, and some jazzy keys lead into ‘By Oursleves’, while the machine beats and tinkling piano compliment Hynes' own vocal on ‘Augustine:’ "My father was a young man, my mother off the boat / My eyes were fresh at 21, bruised but still afloat". Here he sings about his parents’ move to the States before Hynes was born, before quoting the theologian and philosopher Saint Augustine in transplanting to the modern and alien urban world, that so many like his parents had to deal with, all wrapped up in black identity. Hynes even sings the last seconds of the song in Krio, the national language of Sierra Leone, thereby creating a global dialogue.

That man Prince also has a big place in Hyne’s world. Not only by the fact that he largely does everything himself here, musically, but that he employs female singers to go along with his falsetto voice, and the fact his music mimics that of the Purple One on several occasions such as the on the laid-back electro funk of ‘Juicy 1-4’, ‘But You and E.V.P. Hynes’ doing a great elsaticated lovesexy homage of sorts.

Elsewhere, there is the synth-percussion workout of ‘Best To You’, along with a stirring vocal from Empress Of; smooth and retro electro-funk on ‘Desiree’, a cover of Eddy Grant’s ‘Love Ya’, but renamed ‘Come On Let Me Love You’ (Grant is from Guyana, the birth place of Hyne’s mother) and which features both Zuri Marley, the granddaughter of Bob, and a sound clip of a woman describing the Sierre Leone conflict; synth-pop in the form of ‘Hands Up’; Nelly Furtado turning up the passion on the slow-groover ‘Hadron Collider’; mellow electro-soul-jazz on both ‘Squash_Sqaush.wav’ and ‘Thank You’; syncopated r’n’b of ‘Better Than Me’; minimalist r’n’b soul on I Know; and stripped back warped acoustic-soul of final track Better Numb, brining us full circle to the opening ward sound collage of ‘By Ourselves’.

Perhaps a little overlong and crammed with too many snippets of songs, rather than fully formed creatures, and also an obviously very personal project, Freetown is nevertheless a minor tour de force of imagination, containing many meticulous and interesting production ideas, the underlying inclusiveness and humanity of Hynes being the winning factors here, along with those generally excellent vocal turns.
Jeff Hemmings

Website: bloodorange.nyc
Facebook: facebook.com/devhynes