17 July 2023 - 0 Comments

Kirikiriroa-based Portland, Oregon ex-pat Brandon De La Cruz has released I Love You Babe, the second single from his forthcoming album Two Kilos Of Blue, which is due out on August 25, 2023.

A cover of a song by cult-favourite folk singer, 81-year-old Michael Hurley, I Love You Babe channels both gravity and tenderness.

The quiet, distant picking that opens the track creates a meditative, steady rhythm for De La Cruz's honey-steeped voice to float just over. The bridges are coloured by doo-wop style la-la’s that provide the perfect counterbalance to a minimal, spacious arrangement.

I Love You Babe is expertly sculpted; light and shadow support and reveal each other in the interplay of its parts. It follows lead single Disguise, a meditative, psychedelic reverie which was released on 2 June.

All tracks on Two Kilos Of Blue may be considered a reflection of the artist's tenure as a staffer at Mississippi Records while living in Portland, OR. Samples of folk and country blues recordings issued from the early 20th century by Mississippi are used by the artist to subtly layer and build his arrangements.

I Love You Babe is the one conspicuously sample-free track, but slides through as its author Michael Hurley is one of Mississippi’s flagship artists.

Hurley himself had this to say about De La Cruz’s version of the song:

“That song of mine [I Love You Babe] he did was recorded at one of the sessions for the second Folkways album I was supposed to record, but I never finished it due to a move to Boston from Bucks County, and when I came back to New York some months later, the Folkways office had been closed. I had no knowledge of what to do then but get back on the train to Cambridge… I couldn't see how anybody could like [the song], but Brandon De La Cruz brings it into a new day, don't he? It sounds like new music to me.”

De La Cruz, in turn, says:

“When I was in Portland, I started working at this café called Sweedeedee, which is named after one of [Hurley's] songs, which was in the same building as Mississippi Records, which is a label that put out a lot of his music. I started working at the café without much knowledge of him, and I worked there for 4-5 years, and he’d come in a couple times a month. After getting to know him a bit, his records slowly grew on me. Eventually I worked at the label in the storeroom and got to know him even more. And when I first heard [I Love You Babe], I just knew I loved it. It’s so little known, and I love the way it feels when I sing it. You know how there's certain songs, you can't really explain why, but they make you feel so good to sing, like in your body? That one hit me in that way.”

Having released albums inspired by the works of Rainer Maria Rilke, Joan Didion and Ovid, Two Kilos Of Blue sees De La Cruz draw on images and experiences from a spectrum of chapters from his own life.

The record brings together songs written over a 10-year period, linked thematically by love, loss, spirits, seasons, shades of blue and the moon. Painstakingly recorded and arranged over two years at the artist’s studio in Kirikiriroa, each track is a balancing act of consideration and spontaneity.

Simultaneous, unfolding layers of voices, samples and guitars reveal a narrative steeped in longing and mystery. Many of the songs directly invoke emotional and cultural associations with Blue, while others imply it through their atmosphere.

The title of the album refers to a saying of Cezanne’s: “Two kilos of blue is a lot bluer than one,” which in reference to these songs could speak to the layering of shades and moods in each voice, in each song – compounding to create a dark, plumbless opus.

Comments

Return to News Archive