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The Music of DVSN

Thirty-two tracks from a Toronto duo who took gospel-trained singing, put it over the coldest production in R&B, and made the contrast the whole point.

dvsn

 

dvsn

dvsn are the singer Daniel Daley and the producer Nineteen85, and they arrived on OVO Sound in 2015 with no photographs, no interviews and no explanation — just the music, which was an unusually disciplined way to start.

Nineteen85 was already one of the most successful producers in pop, having made "Hotline Bling" and "Hold On, We're Going Home" for Drake. What he does in dvsn is stranger: enormous amounts of empty space, drums that arrive late or not at all, and long instrumental passages that leave a listener waiting.

Daley's voice is the counterweight. He sings with genuine church technique — runs, held notes, real falsetto control — and putting that instrument into so cold an arrangement produces the tension the whole project runs on.

What to listen for

"Too Deep" is the essential track and the best introduction — nearly seven minutes, structured more like a suite than a song.

"Hallucinations" is the one that broke them, and "The Line" is the most gospel-inflected vocal in the catalogue.

"Morning After" and "Body Smile" come from the second album and show the sound at its most confident.

"Don't Take Your Love" and "Between Us" with Snoh Aalegra are the best-sung things here, and the Aalegra pairing is the most obvious good idea anyone has had on this label.

"Use Somebody" is the Kings of Leon interpolation, which sounds like a terrible plan and is not.

"Dangerous City" with Ty Dolla $ign and Buju Banton is the outlier and the hardest record on the list.

"Angela", "Mood" and "SEPT 5TH" are the deep cuts the devoted listeners name, and "Conversations in a Diner" is the strangest thing in the catalogue.

Go deeper

SEPT 5TH (2016) is the debut and the most complete statement; Morning After (2017) is the more ambitious record.

The OVO Sound roster — Majid Jordan, PARTYNEXTDOOR, Roy Woods — is the immediate context, and Nineteen85's production credits outside dvsn are worth tracing on their own.

Listening note: the space is the instrument. Nineteen85 leaves gaps where a producer would normally put a drum, and holds instrumental passages far past the point where a pop record would bring the vocal back. Played quietly it can read as unfinished; played properly it is the tension the whole project runs on.

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