{"id":1984480,"date":"2025-08-28T12:02:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T12:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1984480"},"modified":"2025-08-28T12:02:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T12:02:06","slug":"blood-oranges-new-album-essex-honey-asks-why-should-it-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/blood-oranges-new-album-essex-honey-asks-why-should-it-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"Blood Orange’s new album ‘Essex Honey’ asks ‘Why should it exist?’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It\u2019s a Friday in New York City, where Devonte Hynes, otherwise known as Blood Orange, is tucked away in his apartment. The afternoon sun has just begun to peer through his windows, revealing stacks of books with a black cello case gently leaning against them.<\/p>\n
Hynes sits center frame via Zoom, with a black bandanna loosely wrapped around his hair. A set of headphones covers his ears; its wires fall alongside his dreads. He\u2019s talking about his forthcoming fifth studio album, \u201cEssex Honey,\u201d releasing on Friday.<\/p>\n
The album first sprang to mind six years ago, when the title began as a simple game of phonetics. But it wasn\u2019t long before Hynes, who hails from Ilford, England \u2014 sitting between London and coastal Essex \u2014 found himself reminiscing about his youth and what home meant to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t like a plan, it just kind of happened,\u201d he remembers. \u201cIt\u2019s not so much the physical but more the mental. I think it\u2019s more that I started thinking about growing up and my time there, and maybe \u2026 trying to understand how formative it was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thus, the tracks for the album so closely tied to his formative Essex years were laid down nearly 3,500 miles away. Even with an ocean between him and his home, he says that he can \u201chave a place in my head and then it doesn\u2019t really matter where I do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe place in my head was England, but I could go anywhere and get that done, in a way,\u201d he adds. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like I build what the surroundings are, and then once I have that, whenever I work on the record, it feels like I\u2019m entering the place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Consequently, \u201cEssex Honey\u201d shows a soft deviation in tone from his previous work. Perhaps, a return to more of the smooth and somber tones that painted \u201cNegro Swan\u201d rather than some of the livelier tracks on \u201cAngel\u2019s Pulse.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI make music the same way, all the time,\u201d Hynes says. \u201cBut in terms of living and my life, they\u2019re made in very, very different headspaces.\u201d<\/p>\n
For this one, he felt a shift in his creative process: \u201cIt\u2019s made from a place of living life, and the outcome is the music, rather than living the music and the outcome is life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEssex Honey\u201d feels freer, though it\u2019s still been meticulously constructed. Regarding its production, Hynes concedes that \u201cI\u2019m always digging and I\u2019m listening and I\u2019m reworking.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a testament to the on-the-go style that Hynes thrives on. In fact, it\u2019s where his music blossoms and why there\u2019s such a deep variation in instrumentation across his projects. When it comes to choosing those instruments, it\u2019s whatever is in his proximity.<\/p>\n
He pans the camera to another corner of his apartment, where an acoustic and electric guitar are racked up next to a mixing console. A cello hides behind them, along with a saxophone.<\/p>\n
Hynes confesses, \u201cI\u2019m the worst saxophone player you\u2019ll ever meet,\u201d but he knows how to make it sound \u201clistenable.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can mix and manipulate audio and make it sound how I want it to sound,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve always felt that\u2019s my strength.\u201d<\/p>\n
He even goes as far as traveling with a hard drive at all times, so he can pop into studios and apartments and build upon the parts of songs he\u2019s already laid out. On one occasion, he remembers being in Paris and recording and \u201cmashing\u201d two drum lines together for \u201cSomewhere in Between\u201d with another pianist, Dylan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was recording that song by myself and pressing record, and then having to run into the drum booth, try to do the track, then f\u2014 up, and then having to run back out,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a lot of that energy for that song, but I really enjoyed it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It all sounds chaotic, and it very well may be \u2014 \u201cEssex Honey,\u201d following suit, lived on a hard drive for most of its life, and he didn\u2019t back it up until it was \u201cvery late \u2026 like, too<\/i> late.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Official cover art for Blood Orange\u2019s \u201cEssex Honey.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one\u2019s trying to steal Blood Orange albums out of an Uber,\u201d he says while laughing, referring to ever misplacing the drive.<\/p>\n
But it all comes together in the end, and every noise sounds as if it\u2019s in its right place \u2014 no drum too abrupt, no sax that withers away to die a slow death out of arrangement.<\/p>\n
When it comes down to the features on his records, it\u2019s mostly a matter of whoever he is around at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s as simple as that, they\u2019re in the room.\u201d<\/p>\n
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