![]() ![]() Its lucidity, crispness, and energy are at odds with the murky, slightly submerged-sounding suite of predominantly fresh material. The sound is introduced and concluded with sections of Wolfgang Tillmans' "Device Control," a composition that obscures the distinction between sound art and dance track. ![]() Termed a visual album, upon its release it could be heard only as one 46-minute piece accompanied by black-and-white imagery of Ocean, or a team of Oceans, constructing a staircase in a warehouse. This was the first and inferior one, the prelude to the proper Channel Orange follow-up. Later in the month, within the space of two days, Ocean released a pair of recordings, neither of which was titled Boys Don't Cry. On the first day of August 2016, The New York Times published "Frank Ocean's Long-Awaited 'Boys Don't Cry' Is Due on Friday," yet the article's opening sentence was less certain, stating that the wait "may nearly be over." Nothing was clear. Through the processing of reports and speculation throughout the time, and knowing Ocean's unease with the pop machine, the follow-up to Channel Orange appeared to be imminent, or maybe mythical, or somewhere within the two poles. After a delay in shipping the physical versions of Endless began to arrive with “Device Control” removed from the tracklisting.During the four years that passed between album-length recordings from Frank Ocean, the Grammy-winning singer and songwriter surfaced on releases by Beyoncé, Kanye West, and James Blake. Physical versions of the album, CD, vinyl and VHS, were put on sale in 2017 on Cyber Monday, mirroring the sale of Blonde physicals the year before on Black Friday. The short film was released on Apple Music shortly thereafter. Frank completed the construction of the stairway, eventually climbing the staircase as he reached the top, the stream glitched and cut to black. ![]() This was later revealed to be a spiral staircase which artist Tom Sachs, who helped facilitate the project, refers to as the “Stairway to Heaven.”Īfter more than a week of inactivity, the stream resurfaced an hour before midnight EST on August 19th, 2016. The live stream, which alternated from live to offline over the course of 19 days, featured a focused Frank Ocean who appeared to be constructing something. The visual album fulfilled Frank’s record deal with label Def Jam Recordings, allowing him to release Blonde under his own label, Boys Don’t Cry, a day after Endless.Įndless originally began as a live stream on Frank’s official website, on August 1st, 2016. Endless was a short film released by Frank Ocean on August 19th, 2016, shortly followed by his long-awaited second studio album Blonde. ![]()
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