dragonchild - dragonchild (FPE)

what Your Ears Say & The Cover Looks Like

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What We Say

From the ghosts of Debo Band - DA Mekonnen's more traditional Ethio Jazz project, rises the Experimental Ethio & Afrofuturistic phoenix of dragonchild on FPE. Here he flirts with fidelity & genres at will depending on colourful collaborator of choice;  if he's summoning his ancestors through spiritual drones or putting out all inclusive calls to the dancefloor through lo-fi funk & digi-dance riddims.

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What The Release Notes Say

​In 2016, Boston-based Ethiopian group Debo Band released Ere Gobez, their second and, for now, final LP. The band played a handful of festival dates over the next few years, gradually trailing off into silence. DA Mekonnen, founding member and bandleader, has spent the years since then slowing down. He questioned nearly every foundational element in his life. He got sober, dove deep into film photography, ecology, and astrology, and focused on feeling the deep and difficult feelings contemporary reality gives us so many ways to escape. He also built a solitary music practice from scratch, which he refers to as an “ancestral practice” - a connection to a spirit of independence he traces back through his family. The idea of an ancestral practice is also a nod to his grandmothers, who were each spirit workers involved in zār, a kind of ritual to purge spirit possession with roots in Ethiopia. Mekonnen’s goal in the reset was to “make things with the kind of love you can’t ever take back,” to quote from Jarod K. Anderson, a poet and writer who goes by The Cryptonaturalist and whose work is one of many inspirations behind Mekonnen’s new project, dragonchild. 

dragonchild takes the exploration of Ethiopian music Mekonnen began with Debo Band and explodes it into vivid, three-dimensional space. Where Debo called back to the sounds of 1970s Addis and added original material along those same lines, dragonchild shatters traditions and boundaries, incorporating sampled material, field recordings, experiments in high and low fidelity, and the throughline that unites the diverse sounds, layers of Mekonnen’s rich and ecstatic saxophone. “I’ve been thinking a lot about ego death and being willing to let certain things go,” he says. “Things that made you feel good about yourself, made you feel really successful. I think artistically those things can be really dangerous. They can be dangerous crutches.” In moving beyond what brought him success in a fickle industry, he is braving new territory to bring us something more, something vulnerable and alive. 

The name of the project derives from Haile Gerima’s 2008 film Teza, the story of an Ethiopian lab researcher who returns to his small village after long sojourns in both Germany and Addis Ababa. Near the end of the film, there is the hopeful but enigmatic line “do not despair - we are children of the dragon,” which evokes the resilience of the people and of the earth. It’s a nod to Erta Ale, the active lava lake in Ethiopia photographed by Michael Tsegaye for his Afar series, included as part of the album artwork and recognized instinctively by Mekonnen as “portraits of the dragon.” 

Although the seeds of this music were solitary, collaborations abound in the dragonchild universe, with artists as diverse as ambient producer claire rousay, the Addis Ababa based multi-instrumentalist Ethiopian Records, and percussionist Sunken Cages. These duets fly freely across the borders of genre, stretching out like long late-night conversations between close friends, work created as an expression of community, abundance, and freedom. The physical form of the record is an eight channel, four LP mix of the final track and centerpiece of the album, a twenty-minute-long saxophone meditation. It is no coincidence that this mix is impossible to listen to alone. In order to experience it fully, you will need three friends and four turntables. 

The photograph that occupies the front cover, also taken by Michael Tsegaye, is of another photo, one placed under glass in a cemetery as part of a common practice in Addis Ababa. Over time, water damage cracked and weathered the glass, and at first what you see are the sharp and irregular fractures, rendered with extreme clarity. It is only on second glance that you see the true subject of the portrait, the ghostly ancestor gazing out from the past. “We have to fight for our lives,” Mekonnen says. “That’s the thing that I feel most adamant about. Our creativity is our birthright.” With dragonchild, he gives voice to a new sound, hundreds of years of Ethiopian and American music all resonating at once. “The record feels and breathes to me like the Ethiopian music I’ve been trying to figure out my whole life.”

CREDITS
​Album produced by Ecogrief FM for dragonchild 
Executive produced by Matt Pakulski 
Mastered by Heba Kadry 
Photographs by Michael Tsegaye 
Design and layout by Al Brandtner 

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Unicode 1200 

Produced by Daniel Louis D'Errico 
Co-produced by DA Mekonnen 
Recorded & mixed by Daniel Louis D'Errico 
Saxophone and organ by DA Mekonnen 
Synths & drum programming by Daniel Louis D'Errico 

The Source 

Produced by Sunken Cages 
Co-produced by DA Mekonnen 
Recorded & mixed by Sunken Cages 
Saxophone by DA Mekonnen 
Synths & drum programming by Sunken Cages 
Contains sample by Hailu Mergia's "Hari Meru Meru" 

Incantation 

Produced by Christopher Cook 
Co-produced by Seth Manchester & DA Mekonnen 
Recorded & mixed by Christopher Cook 
Additional recording & mixing by Seth Manchester 
Saxophones by DA Mekonnen 

LTD 

Produced by Vincent Ama 
Co-produced by DA Mekonnen 
Recorded and Mixed by Vincent Ama 
Additional recording by Seth Manchester 
Saxophones by DA Mekonnen 
Bass, drums, & synth by Vincent Ama 
Additional bass by Tommy T 
Guitar & additional drums by Christopher Cook 

Meditation (Reprise) 

Produced by claire rousay 
Co-produced by Seth Manchester & DA Mekonnen 
Recorded & mixed by claire rousay 
Additional recording and mixing by Seth Manchester
Saxophones by DA Mekonnen 


Hopefulness (Ecogrief FM Radio Edit) 

Produced by DA Mekonnen 
Recorded by Seth Manchester & DA Mekonnen 
Mixed by DA Mekonnen 
Saxophone, bass clarinet & organ by DA Mekonnen 
Flute by Angie Wolfrum 

Sera 

Produced by Ethiopian Records የኢትዮጵያ ልጅ 
Saxophone by DA Mekonnen 
All other instruments by Ethiopian Records የኢትዮጵያ ልጅ 
Contains a sample of "Seqota" by Yezinna Negash 

Above All 

Produced by Seth Manchester & DA Mekonnen 
Recorded & mixed by Seth Manchester 
Additional recording by TJ Wenzl 
Saxophones and keyboards by DA Mekonnen 

GTV 

Produced by DA Mekonnen 
Dedicated to Ancestor Greg Tate (October 14, 1957 - Infinity) 

Meditation (Ancestor) 

Produced by Seth Manchester & DA Mekonnen 
Recorded & mixed by Seth Manchester 
Saxophones by DA Mekonnen 

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Thanks to Mom, Dad, Ang, Sasha, Jenn, Heba, Matt, Seth, Dan, Ravish Momin, Vincent, Chris, Thomas, clarie, Endeguena, & Jinda. 

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For global roots and outernational fusions take a trip through the Slow World Playlist sometime: ​