davey, the solo project of Vallis Alps‘ David Ansari, today officially releases his self-titled debut EP. Listen to the davey EP HERE and watch the visualizer for the new focus track “I Fall ft. Aalok Bala” HERE. 

With a dedication to impulsivity and creative recklessness, davey is a reflection of everything David was consuming during that time. An amorphous project that encompasses subterranean techno (‘N.I.4.N.I‘, ‘SOIL FOR THE ORCHIDS‘), industrial hip hop (‘NOT ME ft. Sol‘), deconstructed glitch pop (‘CONTROL 2002‘, ‘LIFE OF PIG‘), cathartic, soul-infused house (‘I Fall feat. Aalok Bala’) and more. Feeling burnt out from years of touring and multiple transcontinental moves, the project began taking shape when Ansari returned to the studio, loosely playing around with beats as he learnt how to have fun with music again.

Of the duo’s collaboration on “I Fall,” davey shares that “‘I Fall’ is an outlier on the EP, both musically and conceptually – while the rest of the EP explores the chaos around us, this song is about making sense of what’s within. And it’s fitting, given how much ‘I Fall’ pummeled me creatively – I spent two years throwing ideas at the wall and went through vocal after vocal trying to find the right collaborator. But something about Aalok’s voice was just different – she wrote this melody that brought a sense of timelessness to the track, something that is so rare in electronic music these days.”Aalok Bala explains further, “‘I Fall’ offers an inside look into the inner dialogue and conflict of following your intuition.”

From his training in jazz piano to the musical education of his formative high school years, in which he developed an omnivorous appetite for all things weird and chaotic, davey is energised by what he calls “this adrenaline element that I crave in everything I listen to.” A reflection of the stresses that were consuming him at the time, David began engineering his sounds to feel dark and gritty. Building stark beats around found fragments and aural artefacts with competitive instrumentals undergirding them, davey hit upon a dormant sense of aggression.

“Everything coalesced at the right time. I was in the studio with no expectations, no deadlines, no rules. So I spent a lot of time experimenting with synths and FM radios, and seeing how far I could degrade sound quality until everything became unusable. Meanwhile I was adjusting to being back in the states, with all of its idiosyncrasies, and trying to wrap my head around why it sort of felt like I was stepping back into a burning building. So the whole EP came together from sampling news broadcasts and making beats around reporters talking about climate change, or the VMA’s, or whatever,” he explains of his debut self-titled EP

The result of those sessions, his self-titled debut EP, holds a mirror up to the absurdity surrounding him. ‘I Fall‘ marks the EP’s cathartic release with LA-based, Chilean-American experimental artist Aalok Bala providing a memorable vocal backdrop to glitchy, manipulated samples, coarse percussion, and a bass-line that lingers in your chest long past its drop. Like tinkering with a toolbox, Ansari transforms ‘I Fall‘ into a banger that represents every step of his journey thus far – throwing the rulebook away after years spent adhering to the precise and rigid rules of pop songwriting, piecing together elements that shouldn’t work but now do.

Though he didn’t set out to create an intentionally angry record, the energy that animates davey is a reflection of what he saw when he surveyed his own environment, a jarring exercise in raw, minimal musical potency that’s constantly fighting against both itself and its creator. In this way, the project represents a return to David’s roots – and a step forward at the same time.

davey is out now, buy/stream it here.



Cover art by Cameron Spratley.

TRACKLIST
LIFE OF PIG
I FALL (ft. Aalok Bala)
N.I.4.N.I
NOT ME (ft. Sol)
CONTROL 2002
SOIL FOR THE ORCHIDS

PRAISE FOR DAVEY

“He goes by a regular name. But Davey’s music is anything but”
Billboard

“A world away from the sound of Vallis Alps — but every bit as powerful”
Red Bull Music 

“Another display of bare-bones musical potency from the producer”
Conscious Electronic

“Davey Uses Music To Get Closer to Truth”
American Songwriter

“A minimal but searing industrial hip-hop track featuring Seattle rapper Sol”
NME Magazine

“Frenetic, intense and chaotic electro cuts which thrash, heave and go the fuck off over and over again”
Purple Sneakers

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