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This October, Dirty Projectors will release Earth Crisis, the fourth in a sequence of five EPs to come in 2020. Each EP will feature a different band member on lead vocals — Maia, Felicia, Kristin & Dave — with everyone trading verses on the fifth and final installment.
The mode of Earth Crisis is through-composed art song. Longstreth’s arrangements for string quartet and wind quintet — inspired by late Romantics like Mahler & Dvořák and early Modernists like Stravinsky & Berg — are filtered through the reductive, cellular lens of the ‘70s Minimalists. The performances, from a Brooklyn pick-up orchestra that includes members of yMusic and Zs, are detailed and indelible. But unlike Reich & Glass, the repetitions here aren’t mechanical, they’re digital: both music and voice have been cut up, sped and pitch-shifted, deconstructed to expressive ends. Couple that with trunk-shaker sub-bass, and Earth Crisis uniquely owes as much to J Dilla as to Igor Stravinsky.