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**Karen O & Danger Mouse - Lux Prima**
★★★★☆

There's something deliciously perverse about Karen O's career trajectory. Having spent the better part of two decades as the unhinged siren of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, shrieking and prowling across stages in elaborate costumes that looked like they'd been pilfered from a fever dream, she's increasingly found herself drawn to quieter, more contemplative waters. Her collaboration with Danger Mouse on *Lux Prima* represents perhaps the most radical departure yet – a cosmic meditation that trades the YYYs' art-punk fury for something altogether more ethereal.

The genesis of this unlikely partnership stretches back nearly a decade, when Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) first approached Karen Orzolek with the idea of creating something "cinematic and expansive." What emerged after years of sporadic collaboration is a nine-track opus that feels less like a traditional album and more like a transmission from some parallel dimension where Ennio Morricone scored sci-fi films and Juliette Gréco fronted Pink Floyd.

Musically, *Lux Prima* exists in a realm entirely its own. It's ambient without being soporific, orchestral without being grandiose, electronic without being cold. Danger Mouse, whose production resume reads like a who's who of 21st-century cool (The Black Keys, Beck, Gorillaz), brings his trademark sonic alchemy to bear on Karen O's most vulnerable vocal performances to date. The result is something that hovers between dream-pop, ambient electronica, and avant-garde composition – imagine if *Music for Airports* had been recorded in a cathedral during a particularly vivid acid trip.

The album's centrepiece and opening gambit, the 19-minute title track, is nothing short of extraordinary. Built around a hypnotic, two-chord progression that seems to breathe and pulse with organic life, it serves as a vehicle for Karen O's most transcendent vocal performance. Her voice, multi-tracked into an angelic choir, floats above Burton's carefully constructed soundscape of vintage synthesizers, found sounds, and what appears to be the ghost of a string section. It's the kind of piece that demands complete attention – not background music so much as foreground meditation.

Elsewhere, "Woman" finds Karen O channeling her inner chanteuse over a backdrop of noir-ish electronics and shuffling percussion. Her delivery is intimate, almost conversational, a far cry from the theatrical bombast of "Heads Will Roll." It's followed by "Redeemer," perhaps the album's most conventionally structured song, which marries a gospel-inflected chord progression to lyrics that seem to grapple with themes of redemption and transformation.

"Turn the Light" showcases the duo's more experimental tendencies, with Karen O's wordless vocals weaving through a labyrinth of treated percussion and ambient textures. It's the sort of track that reveals new details with each listen – a distant piano melody here, a buried vocal sample there. The album's final act, comprising "Drown," "Leopard's Tongue," and "Nox Lumina," maintains this sense of otherworldly drift while gradually building toward moments of genuine emotional catharsis.

What's most striking about *Lux Prima* is how it manages to feel both deeply personal and cosmically universal. Karen O has always been an artist prone to extremes, but here she finds power in restraint. Her vocals, often heavily processed and layered, become another instrument in Danger Mouse's carefully curated palette rather than the focal point. It's a generous performance from someone who could easily dominate every moment.

The album's reception was notably divisive – some critics hailed it as a masterpiece of ambient pop, while others found it pretentious and overlong. Time, however, has been kind to *Lux Prima*. In an era of playlist culture and shortened attention spans, its commitment to sustained mood and atmosphere feels almost revolutionary. It's an album that exists outside of trends and movements, carving out its own space in the musical landscape.

Five years on, *Lux Prima* stands as a remarkable achievement – a successful marriage of two distinctive artistic visions that resulted in something neither artist could have created alone. It's Karen O's most mature work and perhaps Danger Mouse's most adventurous. Whether it will inspire a new wave of ambient pop collaborations remains to be seen, but its influence can already be felt in the increasingly experimental work of artists like FKA twigs and Th