Old Soul by L'Orange: For the old souls, lost souls and everyone in between

 L’Orange’s music occupies an almost liminal space between the past and the present, owing to his dual passion for early 20th century jazz and modern hip-hop, encompassed in his newest album Old Soul. As well as his undeniable skill which makes him a music production sensation, he is also somewhat of a present-day Beethoven, having suffered severe hearing loss due to cholesteatoma. 

Old Soul, a re-release, is the second album this year released by North Carolina-born artist and producer L’Orange, who makes up one-half of the group Marlowe. Although Austin Hartsook, the genius behind L’Orange, is a millennial, his passion for vintage jazz music truly shines through in his latest album, laced with nostalgia for a time past. While much of the jazz music curated on this album may be characteristically syncopated, L’Orange’s synchronistic re-release of Old Soul is perfect timing not only for the announcement of his new record label, Old Soul Music, but also in harmony with the vinyl boom taking place almost a century since the height of the jazz age. 

Old Soul combines contemporary hip-hop beats with classic samples of jazz icon Billie Holiday—whom Hartsook has described as his muse—to create a transportative record that, despite being a re-release and available to stream for the first time, would be best listened to with a martini in hand through an old record player. With that said, I’d also highly recommend treating your senses to this modern yet romantic take on the America of the 30s and 40s through headphones to fully indulge in the oscillating melodies present from the very first song, “The Good Shepherd.” The first time I heard this track, and every time since, it feels like the music emanates from one ear to the other. L’Orange’s clever use of spoken word to both introduce and underline the songs’ melodies creates a centralising narrative that feels specifically personal to each listener, emphasised by the repeated refrain, “and I thought about you.” 

The next song on the album conveys as much, as a voice begs us “not to be comfortable” before delving into a sample of Billie Holiday’s “Yesterdays.” The streamlined sample evinces a sense of nostalgia for a youth lost—while urging listeners to make the most of the youth they still have. But rather than plunging his listeners into a state of sorrow, L’Orange has Holiday rescue us from utter melancholy through the devotion of “I’m yours”, to reinstall the notion that we are what we become through the connections we forge, whether emotionally, musically, or whimsically. 

Each song blends seamlessly into the next in the album’s musically enhanced narrative—yet the collaborators L’Orange has included in the album create a sense of oscillation as you’re brought sharply to the present day with Hassaan Mackey’s vocals before Kelsey Lu’s siren-esque softened and elongated phrasing of the album’s title “Old Soul.” The effect is of temporal syncopation, making L’Orange’s combination of jazz and hip-hop a true blend of genius. 

Despite its reminiscent jazz lilt, L’Orange has produced an album that at once pays narratorial homage to Billie Holiday’s life and musical legacy while remaining current to modern-day progressive music trends and the art of lyricism inherent to the hip-hop genre. Old Soul’s middle track, Cafe Society, features a spoken word sample that can be interpreted as a harrowing commentary on the hypocritical relationship between socio-systemic inequalities within consumer culture and individual blame. Thus while transporting listeners on a nostalgic and complimentary journey through Holiday’s back catalogue, L’Orange refuses to omit significant aspects of her decline, such as her substance abuse, which eventually contributed to her death from cirrhosis and heart failure. The effect is a transportive and genre non-conforming sound that emphasises the dual nostalgia and progressive potential of music.

The album’s last track, “Cafe Lover,” first released as a single, therefore casts a final harmonious version of Holiday as the jazz icon that she once was, in a sampledelia style featuring the rapper Blu, with whom L’Orange has collaborated in the past, on tracks like Need You and Alone, the latter of which features American actress Dinah Shore. Old Soul as a complete album speaks, like much of L’Orange’s temporally transgressive catalogue, to and of Holiday, and of the sentimentally postbellum period, in which music was at once comforting and invigorating. His re-release of this album therefore, and of Cafe Lover in particular, reminds us of the unifying, soulfully invigorating quality of all types of music, but perhaps especially those that occupy non-genre specific forms.