Coastal Sunsets and City Streets
DEvonté Hynes’ guitar case is plastered with Delta Airlines stickers.
It’s an overcast summer afternoon and the 25-year-old Williamsburg-based musician, who has put out records as Lightspeed Champion and gained renown for his mixtapes and production work, is dragging his well-traveled case to the sound check for a gig at Pier 17 on the South Street Seaport.
It’s going to be one of New York’s few opportunities to catch Blood Orange, Hynes’ solo act, live. More often, Hynes’ creative energies are put to work writing or producing rather than putting on a live show, though both outlets showcase Hynes’ talent for L.A.-inspired melodies, 1980s beats and R&B vocals. While he seems more comfortable behind the scenes, a forthcoming album will hopefully make Hynes a more regular presence on stage.
"When I was younger, I wasn’t fantasizing about playing shows, but more if I wrote that song, or was the guy in the studio behind it," says Hynes. "For the first time in a while I’m taking some time to work on my own tracks."
After sound check, with less than an hour to kill before the show, we take the train to 14th Street so Hynes can pick up gear to use at that evening’s performance.
A self-professed geek, Hynes is in Guitar Center wearing a retro San Francisco 49ers sweatshirt, black jeans and a backwards Knicks cap. He peers through his gold-framed glasses to fiddle with a guitar pedal he’s trying out.
Walking downstairs to pick up cords, one of two guys in the store points at Hynes and asks, "Blood Orange?" Hynes is happily surprised. "That’s weird, recognizing Blood Orange," Hynes says as we wait for an employee to locate 9-volt batteries, "that never happens." Given the strength of his music and personality, it may start to more often.
Out Aug. 8, Coastal Grooves, Hynes’ first full-length as Blood Orange, will likely fill a void in music libraries lacking in soul electronica—melodic electronic music with a heavy R&B influence. On the album’s tracks, beats are punctuated by live guitar while the kicker is Hynes’ soulsoaked vocals, which are treated with a little reverb and pull in an element of funk. Coastal Grooves is likely to call to mind slow-driving Cadillacs, teased-out hair and a beach ball somewhere in the mix.
The act of releasing an album speaks volumes about how Hynes feels about the Blood Orange songs. It’s rare for the Texas-born and London-raised musician, who’s often tied up off stage, to put out a product as final as Coastal Grooves, especially considering Hynes is currently producing for a group of 16-year-olds from the Gold Coast and working on a movie score. Much of the album was crafted over the course of a month in Los Angeles, by "layering beat on beat, the pattern first, then melodies, and in the last two minutes, the lyrics," says Hynes. The songs would go into a playlist timed for the two-hour walk between Silverlake and Hollywood for review. But most of them weren’t originally intended for an audience. "I’ll write a song, no one’s around, so I’ll just listen to it," says Hynes. "[It's] how I end up with albums."
Writing on his own allows Hynes to focus on his personal experiences, but that doesn’t mean that all of the stories are told from his own point of view. Previous experience writing for Florence Welch and Solange Knowles also colors the Blood Orange songs with a female perspective. "After making so many songs for women, I just went into that head space."
As a kid, Hynes would follow his sister around and was first introduced to playing music when that habit took him to her piano lessons. He started taking cello lessons before teaching himself the drums and guitar and, later on, a MIDI controller and laptop.
These electronic elements help to bolster the melodies that form the backbone of the Blood Orange sound. It’s a decidedly different direction than many electronica-based styles today. Dubstep, the glitchy electronic fad that grew out of London’s grime scene and is still growing in popularity in the U.S., is an example of the other direction. "Friends listen to Dubstep, but I can’t be listening to it, I’m always searching for the melody… you know?" says Hynes.
Back outside the store, he’s searching for the subway. New toys in hand and just under half an hour until show time, Hynes heads down 14th Street to become Blood Orange, and bring some California sun to a dark New York afternoon.
>> Blood Orange July 11,
Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. (betw. Bowery & Chrystie St.), www.boweryballroom.com; 9, $15.