Days with Dr. Yen Lo | ||||
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Studio album by Ka, DJ Preservation | ||||
Released | May 16, 2015 | |||
Studio | The End | |||
Genre | Conscious hip hop | |||
Length | 39:07 | |||
Label | Pavlov Institute Records | |||
Producer |
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Ka chronology | ||||
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Days with Dr. Yen Lo is a full-length studio rap album by the duo Dr. Yen Lo (Ka and DJ Preservation). The pair recorded the album at The End in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York, where it was released on May 16, 2015 via Pavlov Institute Records. The album was produced by Preservation with Tim Fodness as co-producer. The group's name, as well as the album title, were inspired by Khigh Dhiegh's character Dr. Yen Lo from John Frankenheimer's 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate .
The album was Ka's fourth studio album, following 2013s The Night's Gambit and preceding Honor Killed the Samurai released in 2016. The duo had previously collaborated together on 1200 B.C. an extended play released in 2014. The trailer for the album was released on February 12, 2015 via Ka's YouTube channel. The album features 12 tracks, all named "Day" followed by a number. A series of music videos were released for three of the tracks:"Day 0", "Day 3" and "Day 70", all directed by the duo. [1]
Rapper Ka released The Night's Gambit in July 2013 before working on a collaborative Extended play with DJ Preservation in 2014 which released as 1200 B.C. [2] The pair decided to name the record after Dr. Yen Lo, Khigh Dhiegh's character from the 1962 political and psychological thriller The Manchurian Candidate by John Frankenheimer. [3] [4] The album was written not to retrace the plot of the film but plays soundbites interspersing original lyrics. [2]
Similar to The Night's Gambit this was recorded in The End in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York, [5] Nathan Stevens from Spectrum Culture suggests the record is designed to be "anti-pop, meant to make listeners profoundly uncomfortable." [6] Ka plays the part of the narrator and Preservation takes the position as director. [6]
Review scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
Pitchfork | 8/10 [7] |
Spectrum Culture | (85%) [6] |
Spin | 8/10 [8] |
Tiny Mix Tapes | [9] |
Tom Hull | A− [10] |
Days with Dr. Yen Lo was met with generally favorable reviews from critics. Samuel Diamond of Tiny Mix Tapes gave it maximum score saying that the album is "a work of art that feels fully realized on every level, from the Bigavelian harmonization of each seamlessly stacked Ka ad lib to the mix-mastery of each precisely-pitched Preservation sample". [9] Critic Tom Hull said "rapper Ka and producer Preservation styled this concept album after the notorious Chinese doctor-hypnotist in The Manchurian Candidate , which also provides occasional snatches of dialog. The story strays but the music is hypnotic, with or without the monotone raps". [10] Nathan Stevens of Spectrum Culture said that the album "builds the same world of anxiety, paranoia and treacherous twists as The Manchurian" and is "anti-pop-rap, meant to make listeners profoundly uncomfortable". [6] Winston Cook-Wilson of Pitchfork said that the album "doesn't retrace the plot of the film or the book that inspired it, but instead engages with its themes, playing off of soundbytes interspersed between songs". [7]
M.T. Richards of Spin stated that "This is an album about fear, death and strategic miscarriage in buckshot-logged East Brooklyn, where the carrot of job security is no incentive to hold out hope". [8] American rapper Earl Sweatshirt highly praised the work, calling it the "album of 2015". [11]
Publication | List | Rank | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|
Rolling Stone | 40 Best Rap Albums of 2015 | 9 | |
Stereogum | The 40 Best Rap Albums Of 2015 | 19 | |
The Village Voice | Pazz & Jop Lists 2015 | 139 | |
Tiny Mix Tapes | 2015: Favorite 50 Music Releases | 46 |
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "Day 0" | 2:57 |
2. | "Day 811" | 3:13 |
3. | "Day 3" | 2:58 |
4. | "Day 1125" | 2:04 |
5. | "Day 777" | 3:17 |
6. | "Day 110" | 4:06 |
7. | "Day 81" | 2:57 |
8. | "Day 22" | 3:22 |
9. | "Day 93" | 4:06 |
10. | "Day 13" | 3:59 |
11. | "Day 70" | 2:50 |
12. | "Day 912" | 3:18 |
Total length: | 39:07 |
John Michael Frankenheimer was an American film and television director known for social dramas and action/suspense films. Among his credits were Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Seven Days in May (1964), The Train (1964), Seconds (1966), Grand Prix (1966), French Connection II (1975), Black Sunday (1977), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), and Ronin (1998).
The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American neo-noir psychological political thriller film directed and produced by John Frankenheimer. The screenplay is by George Axelrod, based on the 1959 Richard Condon novel The Manchurian Candidate. The film's leading actors are Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, and Angela Lansbury, with co-stars Janet Leigh, Henry Silva, and James Gregory.
Greenpoint is the northernmost neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, in the U.S. state of New York. It is bordered on the southwest by Williamsburg at Bushwick Inlet Park and McCarren Park; on the southeast by the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway and East Williamsburg; on the north by Newtown Creek and the neighborhood of Long Island City in Queens; and on the west by the East River. The neighborhood has a large Polish immigrant and Polish-American community, containing many Polish restaurants, markets, and businesses, and it is often referred to as Little Poland.
Khigh Alx Dhiegh was an American television and motion picture actor of Anglo-Egyptian Sudanese ancestry, noted for portraying East Asian roles. He is perhaps best remembered for portraying villains, in particular his recurring TV guest role as Chinese agent Wo Fat on Hawaii Five-O, and brainwashing expert Dr. Yen Lo in 1962's The Manchurian Candidate.
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