Is It a Virtual Reality Album? A Show? A Record? Ask Childish Gambino
Author: Shelby Ostergaard
Donald Glover, sometimes also known as Childish Gambino (really, depends on whom you ask and when) continues to prove that he’ll forever be the best kind of weird with his announcement that he will be releasing a virtual reality vinyl of his latest project, Awaken, My Love!
As to what a virtual reality vinyl is exactly, Childish Gambino seemed long on creativity, short on explanations. He told an interviewer on Australia’s Triple J Radio that “it’s a vinyl that you play with virtual reality” and that it was designed to bring the experience of his PHAROS event to an even wider audience. Which, frankly, sounds pretty awesome to us. Also a tad confusing. Just like Childish Gambino himself.
Breaking down what a virtual reality vinyl might look like involves piecing together pieces. Gambino’s website says that this version of Awaken, My Love! will drop in 2017 and will come on two 45 RPM heavyweight 12” vinyl records with an exclusive 17 x 11 poster. All that will cost you a cool $59.99. But Gambino’s PHAROS Earth app has also been updated with VR concert footage of him performing the first track from Awaken, My Love!, “Me and Your Mama.” The VR vinyl is likely to be some combination of these elements. Brian Kinnes described the original PHAROS event as “a look inside Donald Glover’s brain: an entire universe he created for a small group of people to experience together” and then describes an event where aliens danced in synchronization above the crown and Gambino had glow-in-the-dark body paint and hair extensions. The account he gives makes it sound incredible. But music-fest lovers have to wonder whether it will be possible to translate the magic of a cell-phone-free festival to an experience anyone can have at any time.
I’m leaning towards no. But I, for one, am certainly excited to see Childish Gambino try.
https://soundcloud.com/triple_j/childish-gambino-speaks-to-triple-j-breakfast-full-interview
And there are few better albums to try it with than Awaken, My Love! It’s hard to classify which, given Glover’s history, makes sense. He has released “two highly self-reflexive rap full-length albums, a Southern rap EP and a straight pop EP,” as Pitchfork describes. Awaken, My Love! is, unsurprisingly, unlike any of that. Gambino describes it as a “sucker punch,” but in a good way. “I like sucker punches,” he said to Triple J radio. “I like being what you’re not expecting. The feeling of expecting water and getting lemonade. Your brain kind of flips.”
Here’s to flipped brains and always being delighted by the unexpected, at festivals, shows, listening to albums, and when experiencing a virtual reality vinyl for the first time.