Ninja Tune has announced it will be releasing Dorian Concept’s new album, Joined Ends, this October. Stream the first single, “Ann River, MN” here, and check out the pr below the cut.
With his new record, Joined Ends, set for release on October 21st on Ninja Tune, Dorian Concept, is excited to stream his latest single, “Ann River, Mn.” The full track can be heard here. If preceding single “Draft Culture” constituted the visceral, dancefloor oriented, bleeding-edge bass music that made the young Austrian producer’s name, then “Ann River, Mn” widens the vista. Perhaps the perfect encapsulation of Joined Ends’ visionary sound, the song conjures the sense of wonder normally reserved for natural spectacles. A driving, urgently repeated phrase underpins the song, propelling synths that grow in emotive intensity, and vocals by Dorian himself; weaved into the music in a way that’s as textural as it is melodic. A perfect entry point to Joined Ends, “Ann River Mn” drags you in like an audible whirlpool.
This album is sonic geometry at its finest. With layers of breathtaking chords, weighty bass lines and hypnotic synth phrases, the album sits somewhere between a floating lucid dream and a deep trip into a synaesthetic wonderland. The track “Draft Culture” was the album’s starting point – the track made Dorian Concept realize he was “on to something, vibewise.” Then the album began to take shape, very slowly but deliberately. In the past he had tended to work quickly finishing tracks within days, whereas each of the tracks on this album was often a month-long process.
While working on this album, he cut down on touring and distanced himself from his signiature club sound to put his mind on what was to become a two year journey. His rise from bedroom producer to a performer at London’s Royal Albert Hall has been beautifully encapsulated on Joined Ends.
The self-taught keyboarder and multi-instrumentalist studied Sound Design & Music Production at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences which helped inform his unique approach to production.
For Joined Ends, Dorian Concept (a.k.a. Oliver Thomas Johnson) dropped his trademark MicroKorg and started working with new gear, building the album around a Wurlitzer electric piano and a handful of analogue synths. Sequencing only the beats, he based his songs on material he recorded live and then sampled. Concept says, “the new gear was important because the MicroKorg had been my main production unit for a long time.It really tied me down to my old sound. I’ve always been a fan of reduction, so working with analogue gear was a way for me to put my focus back on playing. It feels like my first musical cycle is closing and the start of a new one.” With this in mind, he is expanding his much lauded live show into a trio with toruing planned for the autumn.
He even sings throughout, intertwining melodies and washes of colour. Dorian Concept explains: “I wanted my vocals to have a distant feel, to be somewhat inaudible and androgynous. For them to be something that you’d feel like humming rather than reciting — almost as if the vocals entered your mind as a memory.”
By challenging himself to work outside of his established musical environment, Dorian Concept has re-invented himself. Joined Ends brings the feeling of the artist at his most free.