Dorian makes nostalgic music. One second you’re listening to a song and the next, you’re reclined in the backseat of your car staring out the window, questioning why you had called someone back and then questioning why they didn’t call you back.
This is what Dorian knows. His sound is rooted in soul and R&B but while there’s definitely those elements, he’s taking those in a different direction. Pop, dance, electronic textures, genre-hopping sonics, he’s not worried about “What genre is this?”. He’s curious and as long as he can take his audience along with him, he’s just fine.
He kicks off the project with “INTRO,” which thrusts you immediately into that warm and fuzzy side of the genre. There’s just something about it that makes you feel safe, like jumping into an old-school R&B album and starting with a slow build, the song peeling back slowly in the order of an old-school slow jam. Romantic and smooth and soulful and nostalgic, just the way you want to slide into your seat when you haven’t quite pulled out of the driveway yet.
That’s heightened when paired with a modern-day and vulnerable take on R&B. Artists like Giveon and Daniel Caesar have been slowly leaching the genre of the over-polished performance that equated to a slow, late-night whisper about someone you weren’t quite sure who they were, but you absolutely knew you needed in your life (or needed to get out of yours). Dorian exists in that space.
RECONNECTED contains the melodic tendencies of the classic genre, but the honest emotion of something much more open. Wanting, longing, loving, being unsure, wanting to reconnect, Dorian’s covering it all while also bringing you along for the journey, showing you that “that vulnerability ain’t gotta sound sad.” “Reconnected” begins with sparing melodies that sound just dreamy enough to transport you back to the 90s and early 2000s, where a slow jam would start just a little too slow with just a couple of sexy notes that made you completely forget you didn’t know this person’s name until they called you and you didn’t answer, but you desperately wanted them to call back.
But then, there’s a build that brings the song into more of a heavier rhythm and more of an intensity of energy. More, not less. It stops sounding like “I just miss this person in my room while I stare into the ceiling” and starts sounding like “I just miss this person and want to see their face again, real, real bad.” It wasn’t just romantic, it was sexy. Dorian can keep his voice in the same range, put it on a more energetic song and leave it at that. And as a result, we remember again that you don’t have to just sit in a dark room playing your guitar all night long when you feel romantic. You can dance through it.
That balancing act continues throughout RECONNECTED. “WAKE ME” and “LOVE LETTER” add even more heat and pop more of that lightness that comes with head-over-heels passion toward someone who absolutely has to be the center of your universe. All of a sudden, they’re everywhere, every lyric hits you square in the chest and you wanna start carving your initials in a notebook in case, because there is no way you could have thought this specifically about someone you don’t know. And then the album turns.
On “OOO” and “WHEN YOU’RE WITH ME” Dorian turns the BPMs up just a little bit more, adding more movement, more edge, so that the album can serve as that reminder that emotion has its fun side. Sensuality can be romantic, but it can also be loud, it can be sexy, it can be fun. Perhaps the most amazing thing about these two genres blending together is that Dorian also places himself firmly in that same high priestess of emotion’s box, which is to say that he sees himself as a bold, colorful, emotionally healing artist. It’s more obvious on the songs that aren’t restrained to a sonic box. You can find soul, R&B, pop and dance influences all throughout the album and tone often wins out over an actual genre tag.
It’s as though the album is trying many different doors before one opens, which is part of what makes it so lively. It feels as though the artist is eager to push his own boundaries. If RECONNECTED doesn’t reinvent the wheel of R&B, it discusses such topics as love, desire, aching, yearning, fantasizing, longing, then echoes them out into multiple sonic shapes, many that seem to be experimenting with every method possible to find what fits and perhaps that approach is most of all appropriate considering the album’s title makes every thought more meaningful.
RECONNECTED is, on the surface, a record about reconnecting with somebody else. But it’s also a record about reconnecting with that retro R&B sound, through the eyes of an artist excited to take the style in a new way. So, one moment, the approach can be tender (but not too tender), soulful (but not lost) and contemporary (but not leaving the past behind completely). Sometimes, Dorian just wants you to sit with your feelings.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.
