Lushlife has shared the music video for “Hessdalen Lights“, the lead single of his upcoming EP Redamancy on Fortune Tellers, out March 12th. Under The Radar premiered the video, praising “Lushlife’s echoing production giving Douglass an ethereal, otherworldly element and his own vocals an emphatic intensity. The track is an artful introduction to Halder’s sound on Redamancy, as Halder draws fascinating beauty from its overlapping chaos.” The video for “Hessdalen Lights” was directed by Charlie Anastasis (Liily), produced by Marisa Brown, and features Isabella Fuson dancing in the San Fernando Valley.
This November, Lushlife (under his given name, Raj Haldar) released, No Reading Allowed – the follow-up to his #1 New York Times bestselling children’s book, P is for Pterodactyl to rave reviews, with the Wall Street Journal noting, ““Those who love wordplay are the natural constituency for No Reading Allowed: The Worst Read-Aloud Book Ever, a picture book that’s bright with comic scenes… [and] brilliant pairings of picture and word (and word with word).”
Raj Haldar (rapper-producer Lushlife) has had a strange and storied career on the edges of hip-hop and indie music over the last decade. Starting with Cassette City in 2009, he released three critically-acclaimed albums, most recently Ritualize in 2016 on Western Vinyl which featured collaborations with Killer Mike and Ariel Pink amongst many others. Following a Trump-era mixtape, My Idols are Dead and my Enemies are in Power and a criminally-overlooked collaborative album with the producer, Botany under the name The Skull Eclipses in 2018, Raj spent the last few years publishing a #1 New York Times bestselling children’s book P Is For Pterodactyl, which spent 26 weeks on the Times’ bestseller list, and the sequel out this month, No Reading Allowed. This led to a TV development deal for his kids’ book projects, as well as a “social horror” TV series set in India entitled, Cult of Aghori. All that is to say, he got a little sidetracked on the music front… until now.
REDAMANCY, the new EP from Lushlife recasts classic east coast hip-hop in the context of an astral jazz synth odyssey. The recording features a collaboration with members of the Irreversible Entanglements quartet, who bring moments of sheer free jazz chaos across the recording’s six sprawling tracks. Lushlife doubles down as a producer here, creating a universe where gorgeous synth arpeggios and Bomb Squad squeals fit hand-in-hand. With contributions from Dirty Projectors’ vocalist, Felicia Douglass , HPrizm (FKA High Priest of Anti-Pop Consortium), noise-rap god heads, Dälek and more – Lushlife’s Redamancy EP bristles with the energy of an artist willfully deconstructing his sound into something new.
The single “Hessdalen Lights” featuring Felicia Douglass dropped December 9th with the full EP following in March 2021. Redamancy is one of the first releases from Fortune Tellers, the new label created by Peter Matthew Bauer of the Walkmen.
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