Richmond-based electronic artist London Perry or Dazeases, as most of the city has come to know her, has dropped a new video for “Medusa,” just prior to the release of her upcoming album, Crumbs.
Richmond-based electronic artist London Perry or Dazeases, as most of the city has come to know her, has dropped a new video for “Medusa,” just prior to the release of her upcoming album, Crumbs.
In Greek mythology, Medusa is a gorgon, a creature with a feminine body and venomous snakes as hair – her direct gaze turns people to stone. The creature is also a feature of danger in mythology, which inspired the message in Dazeases’ new song and video.
“I’m very interested in historical female personas, particularly those who seem to suffer or pose a threat,” said Perry. “I wanted to become someone that you wouldn’t engage with or even look at unless you were stepping correct. So for me that brought about the idea for Medusa.”
Co-directed by Perry with Christian Something, a member of collective Ice Cream Support Group, Perry describes the “Medusa” video as dark and surreal, exploring the emotional transition from hurt to anger.
This past Halloween marked two years of Perry performing as Dazeases. Producing her own beats and writing her own lyrics, she often creates her music with its own unique sound and tone.
Last time we spoke with the songstress, she has just premiered the hauntingly beautiful video, “Baby,” in April.
And even though her music is uniquely her own, Perry said she is sometimes still labeled as an R&B or hip hop artist.
“People see a Black woman with a low register performing to beats and read me as R&B,” said Perry. “My music doesn’t follow the structure of either of those genres, nothing against them, it’s just not my sound.”
She describes her music as “Sad Pop” aligning it more with the Witch House genre of the early 2010s naming oOoOO as a musician she compares her music too.
“For me, ‘Sad Pop’ refers to most of my downer lyrical content, which I think I present on the trappings of catchy melodic lines with a somber tone,” she said. “The structure has more lo-fi inclinations where it’s shorter songs, less formulaic and very bare bones.”
Her musical influences range from the emotionally explicit voice of Bjork to the songcraft of Kendrick Lamar. Lamar’s albums Compton and To Pimp a Butterfly, both being concepts album that tell a particular story throughout each song, is something Perry wanted to emulate with her forthcoming album Crumbs.
“I want to make songs that stand on their own but at the same time as an album, sound very intentional and tell a story,” said Perry.
Crumbs is Dazeases first full length album and with it she aims to tell her story of sex, love, and relationships.
“[It] is a reference to me feeling like that’s all I fucking get, crumbs,” she said. “No matter if I doing something I want in the moment, I feel like I’m never fully getting what I need.”
This concept album will continue the story she began in Welcome Back about her experience in one particularly formative romantic relationship as well as how she navigates sexual and romantic relationships more generally.
“Mostly, it’s about this correlating relationship between my sex life and my romantic life. “But also these songs, I feel, get more specific into one romantic relationship that meant the world to me that {are} now over,” Perry said. “I’ve had enough time between that and the album to be able to look back to see how and why things happened as they did.”
The singer describes her sexual relationships and the end of her romantic relationship both as manifesting this feeling of being unfulfilled, playing into her creation of this album.
“I feels like it’s crumbs in different ways, like you keep eating this bag of chips that’s making your stomach hurt but you just can’t stop,” she said. “And when you get to the bottom of the bag and you’re like ‘are you gonna lick up these crumbs or are you gonna wash your hands and move the fuck on?”
And on that powerful note, you can snag the new Crumbs record Saturday, 11/5, via her bandcamp here.
