Blood Orange – Coastal Grooves (Album Stream)

August 10, 2011 5 comments

Check out this stream of Blood Orange aka Devonte Hynes’ latest musical project entitled Coastal Grooves. The album is coming out on August 30th in the US and you can preorder it here. It is already available on iTunes in the UK if you’re cooler than me and live on that side of the Atlantic. Dev Hynes is a British musician, producer, songwriter, and author. In the past he has written records for Florence + the Machine, Diana Vickers and The Chemical Brothers. I first noticed Hynes when I heard him featured on Theophilus London’s track “Flying Overseas” off of the Lovers Holiday EP. Along with the song feature, Hynes also wrote and produced some of the tracks on the EP.

Coastal Grooves is definitely a multi-genre influenced album which makes sense because Hynes is sort of a musical chameleon. Prior to taking on the Blood Orange moniker, Hynes was known as the indie folk artist, Lightspeed Champion and he was also part of an electro-punk group named Test Icicles. Everything about Coastal Grooves is smooth–the production, Hynes’ voice, even the lyrics. The album is so cohesive and well-sequenced, I can listen to it multiple times without even noticing until I’m half way through round two. Blood Orange is doing something different and I am into it; I really don’t even know how to describe or categorize his sound which isn’t always a good thing, but in this case I’m seeing it as a positive.

If you take the time to listen to the stream, leave a comment so I can feel some sort of self worth…please?

BONUS:
Blood Orange – Sutphin Boulevard