Darian Donovan Thomas is a Brooklyn-based composer, multi-instrumentalist, and interdisciplinary artist who excels at combining genres and mediums into a singular vocabulary that can express ideas about intersectionality (of medium and identity). Naturally, his interest in creating all-inclusive art involves smashing down boundaries. That is certainly true in the case of A Room with Many Doors: Day, his new album that doesn’t cling to any one genre, and in the process, succeeds in bringing about a sense of universality.
A prequel and companion piece to last year’s A Room with Many Doors: Night, the new album is a collection of nine songs written and produced by Thomas over a span of ten years, representing the culmination of his experiences in “romantic field research”. While the primary themes of Night are healing and self-acceptance, Day tells the story of Thomas in a growth-and-learning mode.
The album is imbued with bright production, sort of a hyper-ambient atmosphere, awash with synths, vocals, and violins, led by Thomas but also featuring a wealth of collaborators, including Ian Chang (Son Lux), Talk Bazaar, Ben Sloan, Kitba, Michael Haldeman, Sam Amidon, Panther Hollow, Petros Klampanis, and Lesley Mok. In the opening “Safe Space”, a bright, ambient soundscape is dropped into the listener’s head like a pleasant dream, as Thomas sings, “Make a safe space / Please make a safe space for me” (Thomas explained on his Bandcamp page that he wanted to share a “surface-level introspection” to begin the record).
On the single “Ugly Betty,” infectious grooves are heightened by pizzicato violins and Ian Chang’s drumming, as Thomas recollects family members and his childhood home, which involves “staring at the stars on the ceiling” (a reference to decorations he and his mother placed in his bedroom). The song succeeds on multiple levels, matching a graceful early memory with a catchy groove. Complex contemporary beats are also all over “Flourescents”, bolstered by Ben Sloan’s driving drums and Kitba’s ethereal harp work.
Other highlights include the fluttering arpeggio-stuffed “Testing Center”, which has Thomas singing soothingly while capturing the anxieties of LGBTQIA+ communities around issues of identity, health, and safety (the song centers around a trip to a Planned Parenthood location in Brooklyn), and “Mr. & Mrs. Married”, an ambient gem featuring Mike Haldeman’s graceful guitar work and relatively anachronistic placement of banjos from Sam Amidon that somehow adds the perfect texture.
The record ends in a bit of controlled chaos with the delightful “Microcosm Friend”, filled with funky synth bass lines, loops, and bits of manic shouting underneath distortion. As the song segues from staccato noise to sudden silence, we get the sense that we’ve shared an album-length session with Darian Donovan Thomas of – as the press notes put it – “jumping into the flames, making mistakes, adjusting, learning, and ultimately growing.” A Room with Many Doors: Day is the complete package: it makes you think, lifts you up, and moves your body.