Music for a modern taste: Dijon
Damn. That was good. So strange, yet so good.
A shaggy-haired lanky dude dressed in all black with a guitar fixed in the doorway to the kitchen, backlit by the light above the sink.
A distant bass drives over his guitar as he pulls notes from its strings each carefully catastrophic second.
Beer cans crack open in the background.
The camera pans to the right to reveal a clad man in a fishing vest with his pockets full of who-knows-what.
It could be the sway in his pointed finger, or his absolute disconnect from the living room around him into the rhythm of the booms, but something about it is hypnotic.
Every new second of music becomes blissful random discovery– intriguing the listener and begging the ear to journey on. The wackiness of singing in a fishing vest next to a man playing lap steel guitar in a living room, is completely nullified by the well-rounded sapient nature of the music. Dijon allows his unique voice to crack at times, includes dissonant notes in transitional moments, and adds imperfect claps, snaps, and knee slaps whenever they feel right.
It’s unequivocally human.
Quite frankly, it’s weird, it’s intriguing, and it’s fascinatingly good.
On November, 5th 2021, Dijon Duenas, known affectionately as Dijon, released Absolutely to the tune of his already roughly 500,000 monthly streamers on Spotify. The mustard namesake’s debut album boasts a 12-song lineup composed of all different kinds of music under this guise of rhythmic spontaneity dictated by an unhinging that teeters.
Dijon’s unpredictability extends to the collection of styles, genres, vibes, and diversity within the album menu itself. “Big Mike’s” the title song (seen above) is this cacophony of improvisation and emotion that falls together into a beautiful intensity that is raw (the album recording being a shorter splice of the audio you hear in the YouTube video).
Yet the feel of the album immediately shifts to “Scratching” which opens with a fun piano riff that Dijon has explained is an homage to Springsteen. Still, the sound is so… Dijon.
Later, the tide shifts again with “The Dress” which features an icy 80s keyboard, much less impassioned voice cracks, and a catchier more recognizable song structure. In an interview with Apple Music, Dijon called “The Dress”, “a way for me to kind of internally be like, can you actually just write a song? Because I didn’t know if I could,” remarking, “and yeah, there’s a little bit of an homage to Bonnie Raitt, but it was really an exercise in me trying to push myself out of a comfort zone. You can get really comfortable around like a wall of sonic trickery and fuzz.”
Beginnings
Born to a military family, Dijon was constantly on the move but found solace in one place; Elliott City, Maryland. He described the town as a “kind of place that people go to when they’re finished doing something. Or when you want to settle down. I mean, that’s most of the people we grew up around. That middle class, pretty well-to-do background, doing OK. And it’s not necessarily conducive to taking a bunch of risks. You’re not around a bunch of kids who are on the cutting edge.” It was not until his senior year of college that he and high school friend Abhi Raju formed Abhi//Dijon, a duo.
The feel to their music was very much R&B but also very much electronic. Together they released 2 singles and an album, garnering nearly 78,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. After Raju began dedicating extra time to other projects like notable rap group BROCKHAMPTON, the pair split, with Dijon looking to channel some of his more personal shifts in artistic expression.
It wasn’t long before Dijon began releasing music solo, with the drop of “Stranger” in 2017. Fader called it a “lovelorn pop song” which Dijon explained was really a more “stripped down” and “vulnerable” pop sound. After his second single “Violence),” which had elements of R&B and alternative, the dust had settled a little more to reveal Dijon’s place and identity.
So if he isn’t totally R&B, and alternative pop isn’t exactly his bravado… what genre is Dijon?
Bedroom Pop
In the 70s, researchers from the University of London worked to understand the dichotomies of teen culture across both the male and female genders. Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber ended up introducing this concept of “bedroom culture.” It started as this idea that, as women would grow up spending more time in the house, “they were primarily using the home as a site for youth cultural activities because pursuits such as listening to music and reading magazines fitted, necessarily, into their everyday domestic roles and responsibilities.” However, the term became more modernly accepted as time went on and is now more associated with universal bedroom activities. Social media, pop culture, and the internet greatly exacerbated the “culture” in “bedroom culture” allowing teenagers to connect in relatable ways about music choices, playlist names, and the posters they put on their walls.
It’s easy to recall the activities and freedom of a childhood bedroom. A space for exploration, growth, and for trying on new outfits over and over again. A room where you could talk to yourself, or shut yourself in and learn to play guitar for the first time. It’s this same idea of the bedroom that eloquently befits Dijon.
Although his music dabbles across different styles and sounds of music; to his core Dijon is about play, freedom, and exploration.
‘Bedroom pop’ is a real new genre too.
A play off of bedroom culture where it is broadened to be the fuel behind a taste of music. Quite simply, bedroom pop is the idea that anyone, can make quality music from their bedroom — they don’t need a million dollar studio, just the resources available to them and some editing software. More often than not, bedroom pop artists use simple softwares like GarageBand and Audacity to record cheap instrument sounds. The style of bedroom pop ranges, but the feel to it remains the same — cheap, lo-fi, imperfect music that feels very personal. In the same way not all of The Beatles’ music is the same genre or feel, all of their music is still very much The Beatles.
The bedroom pop movement is also raring its way into the mainstream of the music industry. Artists like Billie Eillish have won Grammies as recently as 2020 for work deemed as Bedroom Pop. Finneas, her brother, producer, and fellow singer-songwriter even remarked during their Grammy speech;
“this is for all of the kids who are making music in their bedroom today. You’re going to get one of these” — Finneas.
Dijon got his start by writing music in his bedroom and recording sultry lo-fi tunes with Abhi Raju. On Absolutely, multiple songs were written, performed, and recorded in apartments, attics, and living rooms. Even in his music video of “Big Mike’s,” Dijon had a living room constructed in a warehouse to allow the space for technology with high production value, but still encapsulate the DIY element that is so crucial to his music and to his character.
The feeling of a couple of guys hanging out in a living room, making music together; improvising as much as humanly possible to feel emotion ring in their souls. In such effort, there is so much effortlessness.
“The Stranger”
In his 2020 single recorded prior to the pandemic, Dijon quietly released “The Stranger,” a 4 minute and 30 second twee folk song of only 4 quiet chords.
What makes the song particularly interesting, is that each verse is written and delivered by a different artist, with the chorus sang by a clatter of all the posse members voices. The artists each possess a different style and sing their verses from their own musical perspectives.
Among them are Dan Reeder, a dusty folk guitarist and artist who is described as having “a creative knack for lo-fi, homemade engineering and taught himself how to build his own computers, amplifiers, microphones and P.A systems, some from scratch.” Sound familiar?
Also featured are alternative songwriters Sachi DiSerafino and Tobias Jesso Jr., and the jazzy gossamer-light Becky & the Birds.
Rounding them out of course, is comedian and actor John C. Reilly who sings of seeing the eyes of a lost love in a stranger’s on the street. It’s as beautiful and poetic as it is baffling that Reilly would participate in a project for a quietly up-and-coming artist.
It speaks to both Reilly and Dijon’s character.
These deconstructed and sometimes too serious songs don’t necessarily strike most as the future of music. Often, the sloppy shouts and out-of-tune keys in Dijon’s songs can carry many casual listeners to dislike what they hear at first — attributing this to laziness rather than creativity.
However, polarization has never been new to music.
Artists like The Beatles have historically captured the hearts of many while simultaneously agitating the minds of others. While Dijon likely doesn’t have a massive enough audience to upset with his art, he is certainly on the trajectory to gaining more fans.
After Absolutely was released, his monthly Spotify streamer rate rose from 500,000 listeners to 1.8 million.
End of Record
Dijon is an artist that will have a poignant effect on everyone, whether you resonate with him or not. The best way to experience that effect is by scrolling through Spotify or Apple Music, and adding a few of Dijon’s songs.
He is a character that is constantly developing and eager to share his twisted creative mind with the world; from the bedroom, to a recording studio with John C. Reilly, to a reconstructed living room in a warehouse, he is unequivocally Dijon. Every inch of every song bleeds the very human message of what and who he is, and that’s something not often seen in such a raw form in musical expression.
Listening to Absolutely will certainly take you there with him.
Credits!
