David August has been on a steady path to impress us with every new release during his music career. He made his debut being around 17 years old with a deep house remix of Oliver Koletzki. 2010 was the momentum of deep house and two more releases followed for Diynamic. During this period he didn’t sounded any different than most of the deep house new comers on the scene. Then suddenly he released his first album Times (again for Diynamic) filled with surprisingly good, original sounding, melancholic tunes departing from the easy listening deep house trend. Since than, his sound became more and more prolific in this direction, and totally won our love with his beautiful music. In 2014 he released the epic tune Epikur for Innervisions, had a Boiler Room debut and was ranked in the Resident Advisor’s Live Acts reader’s poll.
Till 2018 he was keeping low profile with just two releases – The Spell and J.B.Y./Ouvert as well as few edits and remixes. In March 2018 he released a fully realised ambient album DCXXXIX A.C. for it’s own new imprint 99 Chats. The beauty is flowing through every tune in the album, but honestly, the ambient is not so exciting sound for us. However we were quite excited for the coming of his third album D’Angelo. And no – the name has nothing to do with the famous r’n’b singer. It has to do with David August‘s Italian roots. It just mean “angel”. By looking at the tracklist and the names of the tracks (Florence, Elysian Fields, Narciso) you get the feeling that a biblical pathos and Italy are definitely the themes in the album.

The vibe of the LP can be described as melancholic and cathartic and that is most prominent in the 9 minute long opus Life of Merisi with its amazing sax in the middle. Another thing that is notable with August’s departing further more from his house and electronic background is the fact that his music now sounds more mature and more organic – live instruments are involved in most of the tracks. 33 Chants is probably the most catchy followed by D’Angelo thanks to the vocals which inevitably remind us of The Doors. We had the chance to watch him live with a band at Sonar in 2016 and it was enriching experience. So we can say with no doubt that he is already a very skilful and artistic musician.
Overall the experience from D’Angelo is amazing but short – the album consists of only 7 tracks leaving you more hungry then full. If there is some critic which can be pointed about it and we are not sure this goes under the label “critic” is that now he sounds closer to Nicolas Jaar and more specifically to his side project Darkside which is mostly because of the similar instrumentarium. Honestly, it doesn’t matter to us cause we are always ready for more good music. With D’Angelo David August proved once again that everything that comes from him is achievement of its own.
D’Angelo by David August is out October 5th, 2018 via [PIAS] Recordings.