Every Monday, 88Nine music director Erin Wolf shares a sonic gem she found using her nearly 20 years of new-music exploration experience. You can hear all her discoveries every Sunday on What’s All This: Adventures in New Music.
It’s a bit of a game of “guess who’s singing now” on the new Blood Orange single titled “Mind Loaded.” And the guessing isn’t too tough, which makes it all the more enjoyable.
Featuring indie-scene-spanning vocals from Caroline Polacheck, Lorde and Mustafa, it’s fairly easy to pick out the who’s who. It’s also intriguing to hear the four voices — that includes Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes — come together from their home countries of England, Canada, the U.S. and New Zealand to form a pseudo-choir that effortlessly and unwittingly transports the listener to realms beyond global bounds.
While creating intrigue, the song is also a grand way to announce Blood Orange’s first new album in six years, Essex Honey. The record has Hynes exploring his childhood in Essex, England, and he calls it a “soundtrack created from a dreamscape of a journey working through grief.”
Indeed, “Mind Loaded” has a natural depth, wrapped in dreams and soul journeys, centering around the piano’s delicate layer and the choir-like vocals of all the collabs — “everything means nothing to me,” the four sing.
Other collabs on the album (due out Aug 29. for RCA Records) go even deeper, featuring author Zadie Smith, actress Naomi Scott, and musicians Liam Benzvi, Daniel Caesar and Turnstile’s Brendan Yates.
Hear “Mind Loaded” from Blood Orange on the latest episode of What’s All This, which you can hear in full using the player at the top of the page. Then be sure to dial into a fresh batch of tunes on the next episode of What’s All This: Adventures in New Music at 2 p.m. Sundays on 88Nine.
Best new indie music this week
- Poliça, "Dreams Go"
- Silica Gel, "NamgungFEFERE (ft. Japanese Breakfast)"
- FKA twigs, "Perfectly"
- Madeline Kenney, "Slap"
- Blood Orange, "Mind Loaded (ft. Caroline Polachek, Lorde, Mustafa)"
- They Are Gutting a Body of Water, "trainers"
- Living Hour, "Wheel"
- múm, "Only Songbirds Have a Sweet Tooth"
- strongboi, "one thing"
- Gruff Rhys, "Saf Ar Dy Sedd"
- Whitney, "Dandelions"
- Jeff Tweedy, "Enough"
