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‘Essex Honey’ will include 14 tracks, which are available to pre-save on all streaming platforms. Dev Hynes has released three tracks ahead of the album, ‘The Field’ released in June, and ‘Mind Loaded’ and ‘Somewhere in Between’ released this week. 

The singer’s upcoming album and newly released songs feature a variety of incredible artists. ‘The Field’ features The Durutti Column, Tariq Al-Sabir, Caroline Polachek, and Daniel Caesar. His most recent song, ‘Mind Loaded’ features well-known artists Lorde and Mustafa. Caroline Polachek is featured on both songs. The album will also include collaborators Brendan Yates, Turnstile, and Liam Benzvi. His new album explores themes of grief and growing up in Essex, England. 

Along with this announcement, Dev Hynes released a lyric music video for ‘Mind Loaded’, which he directed, showing himself cycling in a field. The singer also has a music video for his song ‘The Field’, of the artist and his friends in various different locations, including rooftops, city streets, and rural England.

The music video stars English actress Naomi Scott, and includes footage of Hynes composing and performing music. It portrays a lot of connections between the artist’s personal experiences, music, and identity within the visuals. 

Blood Orange is planning to go on tour for this new album in the Autumn. The singer is starting in North America with shows in Boston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Denver, before heading over to Europe to perform in Berlin and Paris. In November, he is heading to the UK for three nights in London, before Bristol, and Manchester. He is set to go back to North America to end the tour in New York. You can read our MXDWN coverage on the upcoming dates here. 

Before his tour, Hynes will be opening for Lorde and Turnstile, who are both featured on ‘Essex Honey’, in September in North America. He will be opening for Turnstile’s The Never Enough Tour, and Lorde’s world tour of her newly released album ‘Virgin’.  

Pre-save Blood Orange’s upcoming album ‘Essex Honey’ now on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. 

The R&B/electronica project of British producer and artist Dev Hynes will hit home soil in November, with three back-to-back performances at Alexandra Palace Theatre on Nov 8, 9 and 10.

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He will then play at Electric Bristol on Nov 13, before closing out his UK dates with a show at Manchester’s AO Arena on Nov 15. This final show will be as the supporting act for Lorde on her tour celebrating the release of her new album, ‘Virgin’, a record which Hynes had a hand in producing.

The London shows will feature an “in the round” stage production, with Blood Orange performing in the centre of the venue, giving fans an intimate, immersive live experience and a 360-degree view.

These UK stops will follow on from Blood Orange’s US tour dates, which will also see him as a support act for Lorde, and also for punk/hardcore band Turnstile, another act who Hynes helped for the production of their new album, ‘Never Enough’.

Two weeks ago, Devonte Hynes shared the first Blood Orange song in three years, titled ‘The Field’. The dreamy, ethereal tune features contributions from Caroline Polachk, Eva Tolkin, Tariq Al-Sabir and Daniel Caesar. It also contains a sample of  ‘Sing to Me’ by The Durutti Column, the art rock project of instrumentalist Vini Reilly.

Hynes’ last release as Blood Orange came in 2022 with his ‘Four Songs’ EP. Its last full-length project came in 2019, with the ‘Angel Pulse’ mixtape, which received a mainly positive reception. Of the eclectic, multi-genre mixtape, The Guardian wrote that”“Angel’s Pulse demonstrates the most appealing aspect of Hynes’ apparent restlessness: a broad gush of musical ideas and influences.”

Hynes has still been active musically, scoring for film and theatre, providing the soundtracks for projects like Paul Schrader’s drama Master Gardener in 2022. Previously, he’s composed scores for films like the romantic drama Queen & Slim, and has been nominated at the Grammys for the Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance in 2021 for his work on ‘Fields’, a collab album with Third Coast Percussion.

Tickets for the new shows will go on sale on Friday, July 11 at 10am local time. Pre-orders will be available from tomorrow, July 9. You can visit here for UK tour tickets and details, and find the full list of UK dates below.

Blood Orange – November UK Tour Dates

8 – London, UK, Alexandra Palace Theatre

9 – London, UK, Alexandra Palace Theatre

10 – London, UK, Alexandra Palace Theatre

13 – Bristol, UK, Electric Bristol

15 – Manchester, AO Arena w/ Lorde

C2C Festival (Club-to-Club) 2025 is due to run between October 30 – November 2, with Blood Orange’s performance set to be the highlight of October 31. Releasing the current lineup February 26, other British artists will take to the stage at the exclusive Italian show, including pop musician A.G. Cook, as well as techno powerhouses Djrum, Ecco2k, and Four Tet.

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The festival’s lineup announcement follows the latest news of a US premier set to happen May 9 at Knockdown Center, New York City: ‘C2C Festival NYC’. This will feature a headlining performance from electronic experimentalist Oneohtrix Point Never, amongst an eclectic line-up, including British/London-based musicians Nala Sinephro, Two Shell, John Glacier and Kode9.  Blood Orange’s return to live music sparks big excitement amongst European fans; performances from the ‘You’re Not Good Enough’ singer, who has resided in New York since 2007, are few and far between, his last UK appearance being at the British Summer Time Festival at London’s Hyde Park in 2019. 

Last releasing an LP in 2019 with ‘Angel’s Pulse’, listeners have not heard much from Hynes since his EP ‘Four Songs’ (2022), featuring a collab single ‘Relax and Run’ with Erika de Casier and Eva Tolkin. Previously performing under the alias Lightspeed Champion, and part of indie band Test Icicles from 2004 – 2006, Dev Hynes has established himself as one of the UK’s most prolific songwriters and producers, having worked with numerous recording artists from 2010s alt pop classics such as Sky Ferreira and Haim, to music royalty, Kylie Minogue, Britney Spears and many more.

Also known as Blood Orange, Hynes has been releasing music under this name since 2009, producing a sound reminiscent of R&B and electronica projects. Particular highlights of his discography are his sophomore album ‘Cupid Deluxe’ (2013), producing cult hit singles such as ‘You’re Not Good Enough’ and ‘Uncle ACE’, as well as debut album ‘Coastal Grooves’ (2011), which boasts Hynes’ biggest track ‘Champagne Coast’. Recently regaining popularity as a viral TikTok sound, the single has over 200 million listens on Spotify, confirming that Blood Orange’s influence on pop music is one that’s here to stay. 

@lenkerlyrics this song makes me feel like im floating #fyp #lyrics #lenkerlyrics #music #foru #parati #champagnecoast #bloodorange original sound – lenkerlyrics

So far, C2C Festival is Blood Orange’s only announced show of 2025, however, the 39-year old singer has recently been active composing a live performance piece for the fashion brand Marni at Milan Fashion Week. Taking to the stage yesterday (February 26), Hynes provided the music for the show, alongside classical musicians Caecilie Trier and Julie Ant. 

For more information on C2C Festival, as well as Blood Orange announcements, visit the respective links. 

Taken from Blackhaine’s Armour II EP we see the artist display his striking visual aesthetics at play with the video for “Prayer” and taking on the help of Dev Hynes (Blood Orange) and the Soundcloud producer Iceboy Violet to push the envelope in a searingly powerful form of rap and ambient noise. Working with his long-time producer and school friend Rainy Armour II follows their breakthrough 2020 EP which was their first in the Armour series. Watch the video for “Prayer” in the video below:

In discussion about the meaning behind “Prayer”, Blackhaine stated; “It’s about building the guilt you carry into some form of negative faith. There’s ideas of loss in there which often is a companion to guilt.”

Describing the fragments of lineation threading through his work, he later added; “Armour II continues from And Salford Falls Apart. There’s a narrative connect that I don’t believe in being open about, but is clear if you listen to the projects close to each other. Armour II has focus on curation and production alongside the narrative. I wanted to add more voices to build upon this for Armour II. I created Armour II with Rainy whilst building a live show, we performed early ideas of tracks like “Pavements” at Berlin Atonal with Space Afrika, then at the Blackhaine headline in London and the live reaction from the audience has informed the creative processes.”

It’s fair to say that there is a movement in Salford- Manchester that is to some, scarily modern and prescient. Space Afrika (Joshua Inyang & Joshua Reid) have been at the heart of this wave of fiercely talented young innovators and have put in hard graft since they first started releasing music in 2014. Done in the new cocksure Manchester style, which captures a broader ethos and less of the stale mod-rocker swagger whose stereotype no longer applies to arts in the area. As stated by Reid; “We might not have always had the plan to get to precisely where we are now but from the start there was always photographs, collecting things, record shopping, bouncing ideas, pushing creativity as far as we could get,” 

You can see the collaboration between Space Afrika and Blackhaine for “B£E” in the video beneath:

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I spoke with The New York Times about composing the score for Guadagnino’s “We Are Who We Are”. Series premiere is tonight on @HBO Interview by @coralie.kraft

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The soundtrack will feature 12 tracks from the show’s original score composed by Hynes. In a New York Times interview, Hynes said that while he was in Italy Guadagnino and he had ‘got talking about music and composers [they] like.’ Hynes is a big fan of classical composer John Adams, who has written music for Guadagnino’s I Am Love and was also working on We Are Who We Are. Luca then asked Hynes if he wanted to have a go composing some more classical style music, and Hynes went back to New York and started working.

Interestingly, Hynes is actually ‘a classically trained musician who has performed alongside Philip Glass at Carnegie Hall’. In his score for We Are Who We Are, Hynes has blended classical influences with his avant-garde R&B style as Blood Orange. Previously, Hynes has done the scoring for Palo Alto, as well as this years big hit Queen and Slim.

In Palo Alto, his dreamy use of synthesisers and smooth vocals were perfectly matched to the films backdrop of a Californian summer. There is also something heady and distinctively teenage about Hynes’ score for that film. The lyrics of title track Palo Alto, ‘waiting til I know who you are// Waiting for a shot in the dark’ evoking that teenage feeling of waiting for something to happen.

His score for Queen and Slim was described as demonstrating ‘to the fullest Hynes’ ability to subtly evoke a range of emotional colour’. Luca Guadagnino said that he chose Hynes for the score because he appreciated the ‘eclec-ticity’ of his work, adding that he feels ‘seen‘ by the prolific musician.

Hynes reportedly wrote the score before quarantine, but did some last minute adjustments during lockdown. He described his process as a natural one, stating that he would watch a scene and immediately know ‘what landscape [he] wanted the score to exist in’. Sometimes he would even ‘start improv[ising] on the piano while watching the scene’. His 12-track score for Guadagnino’s miniseries will be sure to impress.

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<LINK IN BIO> Blood Orange x 박혜진 @parkhyyejin Call Me Freestyle

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Blood Orange has released a plethora of successful tracks and collaborated with a diverse set of names such as Tinashe, Toro y Moi, A$AP Rocky and Mariah Carey. His most recent collaboration with Park Hye Jin delivers everything from distorted vocals to a lullaby-like piano melody. When Park Hye Jin’s voice comes in, rapping over Hynes in Korean, the result is transcendental. The track is busy, but in classic Blood Orange style, all its disparate elements come together to form something beautiful.

Blood Orange, whose real name is Devonté Hynes, has been creating music since 2004. His first project was a dance-punk band called Test Icicles. When they performed live, Hynes, the bands guitarist and occasional vocalist, would writhe around on stage clad in dark clothing delivering grungy guitar lines.

He then left the band to pursue a solo career under the alias Lightspeed Champion. His EP Falling Off The Lavender Bridge was a collection of quirky songs with ‘well manicured strings and acoustic guitars’. Songs like Midnight Surprise had a Kooks like feel to them, all-be-it with far more unconventional lyrics.

In 2009, just after Hynes moved to New York,  he decided to put Lightspeed champion on the back burner and focus on a new project. This would be far more R&B and electronic in sound. His debut single Dinner was produced with Chris Taylor from Grizzly Bear and epitomised the artists new direction. The bright synth pattern and percussive beat is foot-tapping and dreamy, reminiscent of 80’s electronica but more gentle.

The instrumentation in this track, and also in his 2011 debut EP Coastal Groove, is a world away from his work with the Test Icicles and as Lightspeed Champion. The upbeat rhythm of songs like Forget It and Champagne Coast give them a pop like feel that was never present in Hynes’ previous endeavours.

His second EP, Cupid Deluxe, was a solid album that displayed a musical comfortability which had felt lacking when Hynes was working under the moniker of Lightspeed Champion. In standout track Your Not Good Enough, Hynes’ breathy vocals work perfectly with the jazzy bass line and maracas. In the followup to this he wrote some music for the motion picture Palo Alto, his dreamy R&B style fitting perfectly with the hazy visuals of a Californian summer.

Alongside his prolific work as Blood Orange (releasing an album and a mixtape in the last two years), Hynes wrote the score for last year’s crime thriller Queen & Slim having first cut his teeth as a film composer with Gia Coppola’s 2013 film Palo Alto. We Are Who We Are meanwhile will see Guadagnino at the helm of his first television show, having accrued international acclaim as the director of the film Call Me By Your Name, as well as the 2018 remake of Suspiria.

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I composed an original score for the forthcoming HBO original series by Luca Guadagnino. “We Are Who We Are” @wearewhoweare airs September #lucaguadagnino @hbo @skyitalia @wildsidesrl @the_apartment_pictures #smallforward @fremantle

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Set for release in September this year, the series stars Jack Dylan Grazer (from the horror movie It) as well as newcomer Jordan Kristine Seamon, whose father is played by the musician Kid Cudi. So far, all that has been made available for the series’ promotion is a 20 second trailer that contains a brief snippet of Hynes’ twinkly piano keys, floating upon the surface of a lush layer of synths. “They think we’re weird” sighs a boy, watching a group of teens run into the sea. “Doesn’t that bother you?”replies the girl sat beside him. Watch the teaser below: