"Into The Blue is the clearest portrait of who I am as an artist. It's me through and through," says multi-instrumentalist Aaron Frazer. Following Frazer's lauded 2021 debut, Into the Blue is expansive- a daring blend of soul, psychedelia, spaghetti western, disco, gospel and hip-hop, representing the impressive range of Frazer's sonic talents. Frazer maintains the unmistakable falsetto and classic songwriting he's known for, but plants Into the Blue firmly in the now with a hip-hop mentality at its core, weaving together genres and production techniques to form something new.
The opener, "Thinking of You," is harmony-laden soul drawing inspiration from legendary Harlem trio Black Ivory over a bed of strings. "Lonely nights like this, still I feel your kiss," Frazer coos nostalgically in his high register. Later, on "Time Will Tell," he plaintively considers the end of a relationship, "trying to figure out // how love went from sweet to sour." Into The Blue was conceived out of heartbreak. Following the end of a long relationship, Frazer moved cross-country from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and embarked on a journey that's reflected in the album's themes of grief, loneliness, and searching for healing. "Into The Blue really means heading into the unknown. That has been the last year of my life and I'm still in the blue," Frazer explains. "But there are also songs here that celebrate love and the giddiness of a new relationship and all that. That's part of a breakup to me, processing the whole thing, remembering the things that were right as much as the things that were wrong."
The title track, "Into The Blue", is a haunting, resolute anthem, combining cinematic strings and tough-as-nails breakbeats as Frazer heads west. "Here I go, to a place where the broken heart knows," he sings. "It's all I can do. Back into the blue." Frazer wrote on every track and played several live instruments on the album. "Payback" is an explosive dance floor heater, featuring shimmering tambourines and driving bass lines. Northern soul drums meet snarling fuzz guitar, hurtling towards its epic conclusion.
The album features moments of towering arrangements, recalling David Axelrod and Ennio Merricone, balanced by rawness, incorporating iPhone recordings and one-take vocals. For Into the Blue, Frazer enlisted Grammy-winner Alex Goose as co-producer, known for his crate-digging samples and collaborations with hip-hop artists like Freddie Gibbs, Madlib and Brockhampton. Frazer also experimented with samples for the first time on a record, drawing from unexpected sources like 90s R&B group Hi-Five.
Hip-hop has always inspired Frazer's artistry. Born in 1991 in Baltimore, he started playing drums at the age of nine and remembers listening to Will Smith's Big Willie Style in 1997 and Jay-Z's "Hard Knock Life" in 1998. "That blew my mind," he says of the latter. "I learned to play the drums studying a lot of classic rock, but my pocket developed the way it did because of rap-drumming along to Jay-Z's 'Reasonable Doubt' and Nas' 'Illmatic' until I knew every break on that record." Additionally, The Roots' 'Tipping Point' was particularly significant with its electrifying live instrumentation. "It was a world that I didn't know existed. You could fuse those two elements of a live band and hip hop together?" He tinkered with creating beats on FL Studio as a teenager and pivoted into sound engineering at Indiana University. It was here that he met the musicians who would become his band Durand Jones & The Indications and discovered his signature falsetto.
In 2021, Frazer released Introducing..., his debut solo album with Black Keys guitarist Dan Auerbach. Now, says Frazer, "I'm excited to keep breaking some of the expectations around what exactly I'm supposed to be, artistically and musically." Into The Blue is a continuation of that spirit of fearless, fun experimentation. "The distance between genres is arbitrary," he says. "And the distance between Carole King and Westside Gunn for example, is a lot shorter than people realize."
Though Into the Blue was born out of heartbreak, Frazer hopes it leaves listeners with a sense of optimism. "You know, you can still laugh on a day when you're grieving," he says. He's excited to bring the music to life on stage, even when performing such intimate material will be both a visceral and vulnerable experience. "Oh my God, I'm gonna cry so much on stage," he laughs. But he knows that this is all part of the process and his evolution. "There's no peaks without valleys," he says, but Into The Blue sees Aaron Frazer at new heights.
