After releasing A Seat at the Table last week on short-term notice, Solange has decided to drop documentary footage taking behind the scenes of her opus. The 11-minute film takes a look at the album’s beginning stages and features brainstorming and performance sessions with Sampha, Kwes, Chairlift’s Patrick Wimberly, and Solange’s son Julez. Early strands of “Don’t Touch My Hair” and “Mad” are featured throughout documentary, which is presented in vérité with no explanatory interludes. Watch the footage and read Solange’s accompanying statement below. The behind the scenes look comes days after she released the videos for “Cranes in the Sky” and “Don’t Touch My Hair.” [Pitchfork]
“A Seat At The Table, Beginning Stages” is a look at the early days of jam sessions, experimentation, and the exploring of sounds and ideas for the album.
While some of the jam sessions featured did not make the album, they helped to create and identify the sonic tone, and the early lyrics and concepts I wrote for the project.
This video is broken up into 3 different parts. The first and second parts happened in Long Island and New Orleans where I first started to jam and collaborate on ideas with the incredible artists and musicians featured (as well as some other incredible artist and musicians who are not shown here). A lot of these days would just start with me singing a melody or someone playing a synth part or bass line, and would transition into an hour long jam.
The third part is me taking all of these jams to New Iberia, LA with just my engineers and creating the actual song structures, building the sounds, and writing the lyrics and melodies.
I later took these songs to Los Angeles to work with Raphael Saadiq to help amplify the production, as well as record the vocals alongside Troy Johnson. When I look back at the beginning stages, I remember the powerful energy that set the tone, and that I’m so grateful followed us everywhere during the creation of this record.
