“a blissful spiritual balm” – Uncut
Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn share a common collaborative ethos, a genuine sense of musical curiosity, and a cosmopolitan eagerness to escape genre conventions. This shared vision first united them on 2022’s Pigments: icy and warm, stripped-down and grand, familiar and otherworldly. Now, it brings them together again for 2024’s Quiet in a World Full of Noise.
Quiet in a World Full of Noise blends atmospheric and orchestral soundscapes with soulful jazz and journalistic vocalizing. It is intimate, soul-baring, spectral and startling, driving it all home with stark, confessional lyrics. The new album finds Richard raw and exposed. This year, her musician father experienced mini-strokes while receiving a cancer diagnosis. Last year, someone fatally shot her cousin Cisco seven times in New Orleans. Richard channels the emotional impact of these traumatic losses into her lyrics and vocal performances. She leaves her vocals bare and human, raw and unprocessed across the album. Thus, Quiet expands the definitions of progressive, avant-garde R&B by rewriting them altogether.
With Quiet, Zahn and Richard have created an album that serves as a blueprint for stillness and simplicity. It describes the art of working across differences in a polarizing cultural climate. Richard describes Quiet in a World Full of Noise as grounding: “Right now, everyone’s a little bit overwhelmed. I hope this will be the record people put on when they need the opportunity for reflection when they need stillness in their lives, now more than ever.” The album’s dynamic movement and intentional sequencing result in a project that feels both intimate and expansive, a bold experiment in emotional storytelling.
Recommended for Fans of FKA Twigs, Kelela, Solange and Blood Orange.
LEARN MORE: https://dawnrichard.bandcamp.com/
