INCOMING | Dessa — Castor, The Twin

[Doomtree; October 4]

The announcement of this new album from Minneapolis rapper and Doomtree collective member Dessa was something of a social experiment. Fans subscribed to the label’s mailing list were informed of the news and asked to hold it under their hats for a while to see “just how leaky this ship is”. Well, it didn’t take long for the news to get out and Dessa has now publicly confirmed the release on the Doomtree blog.

Castor, The Twin is largely made up of previously released tracks – including some from her brilliant 2010 debut full-length, A Badly Broken Code – “ambitiously reshaped” with an ensemble of talented musicians who replace the programming and production tricks of the originals with scores that “lean toward a classical sound” and incorporate viola, grand piano, vibraphone, mandolin, upright bass and timpani. Album closer, ‘The Beekeeper’, is the album’s sole new track, and offers a preview of what will be the first single from her second album proper, due in 2012.

Calling the album one of her “most challenging projects,” Dessa explains that the title refers to “the twin brothers Castor and Pollux of Roman mythology, the pair of bright stars in the Gemini constellation. Pollux was part god, a fighter with metal hands. Castor was the mortal of the pair, but the two were inseparable. I was drawn to Castor and Pollux because I liked the idea that each song on the album was the human twin of the more aggressive compositions that had been released on other projects.”

Stream the new version of ‘Palace’, originally produced by Paper Tiger, below.

Tracklist:
01 551
02 Kites
03 Mineshaft
04 The Chaconne
05 Into The Spin
06 Dixon’s Girl
07 The Crow
08 Alibi
09 Palace
10 Mineshaft 2
11 The Beekeeper

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