Night Beats, the moniker of Texas native Danny Lee Blackwell, is today releasing the brand new single ‘Behind The Green Door’ and announcing a limited 7”, due out April 11th 2025 via Fuzz Club / Suicide Squeeze. The A-side is out digitally today alongside a striking Giallo-indebted music video, which also marks Blackwell’s directorial debut. He says of the single:
“The song started as a lone star instrumental, something I pieced together in my studio in 2024. I imagined dusty roads and dimly lit dance halls. I wanted the guitars to shimmer like heat waves on an open road. The rhythm to pull like footsteps across a wooden floor, soaked in smoke and neon. The lyrics followed, drawn from past and present—unwavering love, transcendence. The ‘green door’ is that threshold between devotion and disillusionment. The story lives not just in the words, but in the tones and textures, if uncovered.”
Under the moniker of Night Beats, Danny Lee Blackwell has spent the last fifteen years exploring a nexus of vintage rhythm & blues, after-midnight soul, and sun-scorched psychedelia. On Night Beats’ latest offering, which follows his critically acclaimed 2023 album ‘Rajan’, Blackwell presents two markedly different renditions of his song ‘Behind the Green Door’.
On side A, out everywhere now, we’re treated to a down-tempo, minor key track drenched in the haze of vice, as if some aspiring Motor City outfit had travelled down to Austin and snuck into the studio to cut a song while The 13th Floor Elevators were on a smoke break. Or perhaps it’s more akin to a meeting between Ray Charles, Skip Pence, and Link Wray. Or maybe it’s Joe Tex grappling with Gram Parsons. Or Duane Eddy pairing up with Cedric Bixler-Zavala. Or maybe it’s just years of Blackwell distilling and translating the sounds around him into his own concoction. Ultimately, ‘Behind the Green Door’ is an invitation to enter the kingdom and dwell in the garden while the shadow of doubt looms nearby, a subconscious journey into the delights and pitfalls of unknown territories made manifest in the music of Night Beats.
Side B features the Rah John version of ‘Behind the Green Door’. According to the Night Beats camp, Rah John was discovered by Blackwell on his recent expedition to the island Koh Khram Yai, located off the coast of Pattaya in the Gulf of Thailand. Not much is known about the young artist besides his love for 70’s Thai disco and dancehall tapes received from local sailors. Hearing a streak of revelry buried in the Night Beats’ tune, Rah John summoned a sunnier, breezier, and more exotic side to the Rhythm and Blues sway of the original.
The ‘Behind The Green Door’ 7” is released April 11th 2025 via Fuzz Club in the UK, Europe and Australasia, and Suicide Squeeze in North and South America.
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