As a rule, Dirty Projectors are known for experimental indie rock: for daring harmonies, hairy rhythms and electronically distorted sounds. But last year the group, which had been playing in a stable line-up for a good year and a half, launched a new project that diverged from their established path.
The four musicians led by creative anchor and founder Dave Longstreth released a series of five EPs across 2020. »EP« stands for »Extended Play« as a term for smaller-scale musical projects that don't fill an entire album. Dirty Projectors used these mini-albums to place a different member of the band in the limelight each time. Each record is very different from the others.
On the fourth of the five EPs, »Earth Crisis«, singer and keyboarder Kristin Slipp takes the lead. Dirty Projectors had been preoccupied with the climate change for some time, most recently in 2010 on their EP »Mount Wittenberg Orca«, where they joined forces with Björk to sing airy and onomatopoeic songs about the end of the world. And »Earth Crisis« likewise revolves subtly around the results of environmental damage and the meaning of human existence on Earth.
Many different paths led to the composition of the music: when he was going through an old hard disk, Dave Longstreth came across orchestral arrangements of songs by the punk band Black Flags, which he moulded into new tracks, song loops, echo effects and jolting rhythms. »It felt like a biological process,« says the composer, » a process of recycling, making old into new.«
Plus, opposites have a unifying effect. As he did later in »Song of the Earth in Crisis«, Longstreth took inspiration in these arrangements for string quartet and wind quintet from the complex harmonies of the Late Romantic, as well as from avant-garde pioneers like Igor Stravinsky and from 70s minimalism. Longstreth breaks down and alters his material using digital techniques. »I love collages like this,« he admits. »They contain all the original components, but still produce something completely new. They are one way of getting through to the essentials.«
5 questions for Dave Longstreth: The lead singer of Dirty Projectors talks about his first orchestral work and our responsibility towards nature.
The essentials in the first song, »Eyes on the Road«, are announced by the ethereal voices of Kristin Slipp und Dave Longstreth: »Nothing we could ever dream could make us whole«. The woodwind ignores this fact and portrays a pastoral idyll, but then the melody splits into minimal patterns and becomes static. An illusion padded in cotton wool.
Chordal thrusts from the strings form the foundation of »There I Said It«, which sounds »like an activist variant of Destiny’s Child«, as the pop blog shitesite puts it. Thanks to the bird’s-eye technique, the music jumps like a vinyl record: tempo, beat and character shift abruptly; Dave and Kristin sing »Which way does the wheel turn?«. The answer to the question is uncertain.
The collage technique is also used in the puzzling final song, »Now I know«. The intro breaks the chords down into their component parts. Its incorruptibility dissolves into a fragile song that the strings carry on flageolet wings. It is followed by a kind of hymn where Slipp's bright soprano outshines everything else. The music here is as cyclical as nature itself. As Longstreth says: »Let go, fall apart to bring forth new life«.
Text: Laura Etspüler, Stand: 11. August 2021
