This week’s PBS Feature Album is New Blue Sun, the debut solo album by André 3000.
New Blue Sun is an entirely instrumental album centered around woodwinds; a celebratory piece of work in the form of a living, breathing, aural organism. Wind is the most essential element of André’s new solo album that brings his flute playing to the centre. Taking an interest in wind instruments at least 20 years ago, he experimented with guitars and bass and liked how flutes and saxophones sounded. A jazz fan, he read that John Coltrane played clarinet before he played the sax, so he bought a clarinet and started playing it.
“I've been interested in winds for a long time, so it was just a natural progression for me to go into flutes,” André says. “I just like messing with instruments and I gravitated mostly toward wind.”
New Blue Sun features a core group of today’s best healing music players: lauded multi-instrumentalist Carlos Niño on bells, chimes, cymbals, drums, gongs, plants and percussion; Nate Mercereau on guitar, guitar synth and live sampling; and Surya Botofasina on keyboards and synthesizers. André plays several different wind instruments on this album, including a digital wind instrument, a Maya flute, and others made of wood and bamboo.
Tune in all this week to hear tracks from New Blue Sun, and PBS Members have the chance to win a digital copy of the album, simply email your name and membership number to before midnight Sunday December 3.
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TOP TRACKS WE'RE LOVING THIS WEEK
Charm of Finches - 'Atlantis'
Hand to Earth - 'Waṯu'
The Bamboos - 'For The Record' (feat. Ohmega Watts & Ozay Moore)
Ambrose Akinmusire, Bill Frisell, Herlin Riley - 'Owl Song 1'
Julia Holter - 'Sun Girl'
Roza Terenzi - '1800Bounce'
Gut Health - 'Juvenile Retention'
The Silversound - 'FuzzBoxGirl'
Sugar Fed Leopards - 'Need You Now'
Bjork & Rosalia - 'Oral'
