Dornik - Dornik

Pitchfork 71

Jessie Ware might seem an unlikely tastemaker: an artist who exemplifies hushed, unshowy restraint, unassuming craft over buzz. So it only makes sense that the colleagues she has attracted work in a similarly low key. Her labelmates on PMR Records include producer Julio Bashmore, who’s quietly become an innovator in a genre full of professional Xeroxers; Jai Paul, who’s known for compelling music that’s barely released; and Dornik Leigh, Ware’s tour drummer, who’s since embarked on a solo career as languidly paced as his music. Lead single "Something About You" came out in 2013 and already sounded timeless, or more precisely out of time: lovelorn neo-soul that shimmers like a late-summer mirage. Subsequent singles "Drive" and "Stand in Your Line" were much the same, and two years later, Leigh’s proper debut Dornik—named for his parents, Dorothy and Nick—already sounds lived-in.

It’s hard to hear about Dornik without soon after hearing about his resemblance to Michael Jackson. The comparison is fair—Dornik, like many, idolizes the King of Pop, and does resemble Michael vocally, albeit a less hysteric, more quavery version. (And hey, Dornik is a more compelling idea of Michael x 2015 than Xscape was.) Because Dornik makes sumptuously arty R&B, he also gets the Big Three R&B Comparisons almost every time: Frank Ocean, the Weeknd, and Miguel, none of whom he is anything like. Better comparisons might be Maxwell circa BLACKsummer’s night, or Dev Hynes, or mid-'90s Sade and Everything But the Girl, or for that matter Ware herself. Often, Dornik evokes the brooding side of early-'90s R&B: the cascading-waterfall SFX, reverbed woodwinds, and fuzzy guitar that appear throughout, the haze of synth pads that hangs over most of the album, Dornik’s preference for retrofuturist sounds over modern.

All this moodiness is in service of something specific: Dornik rivals E•MO•TION for the year’s most crushed-out album; it’s as if Ware’s "Imagine It Was Us" was an entire album of longing bliss. "Blush" is full of little synth twinkles and dazed guitar tumbles that sound like smiles creeping upon a lover’s face. "Mountain" is an uncannily accurate reproduction of the feeling of lying side-by-side with someone in a meadow by a quarry. "Stand in Your Line" might have been an insufferable friend-zone lament from another artist ("I joke and call you my girl, then you smile and you laugh and you call me your boyfriend—oh, if this were true"), but Dornik offers a vocal earnest enough and an arrangement luxuriant enough to hush any complaints. Even the more combative tracks sound as if an hour or kind word would sweep him right back into a swoon. The lyrics rarely transcend pillow talk, but it hardly matters; Dornik leaves the poetry to the arrangements.

All this makes Dornik easy to get lost in—and also, to lose track of. Extending "Imagine It Was Us" to album length is an amazing idea in theory, but in practice hypnotic becomes narcotic. The sequencing is curious: singles toward the end, midtempo mood pieces toward the front; it makes otherwise sumptuous tracks sound samey, and when Dornik tries to inject levity (the singsong "Chain Smoke"), it makes for a jolting, unwelcome distraction. In a way, though, even this fits: the album’s like a fog one can drift in and out of for however many exquisite minutes. There are points in summer and in love when nothing else will do.