DOMi and JD Beck assembled their album from separately recorded takes

Fifteen songs, the better part of an hour, eighteen months of work in a home studio in Dallas — and much of what you hear on the record was never played in the same room at the same time. DOMi and JD Beck built their second album, “WHO ASKED?”, from isolated takes^*1: each contributor recording alone against a demo and a click track, the parts stitched together only afterward. It arrives July 31 on Anderson .Paak’s APESHIT label, in partnership with Blue Note Records.

Their 2022 debut, “NOT TiGHT”, was crowded with names — Herbie Hancock, Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Anderson .Paak himself. This time the marquee guests are gone, replaced by something harder to announce: a chamber-sized ensemble of classical players threading piccolo, oboe, trombone, violin, cello, flute and flugelhorn through the songs. More musicians, fewer names on the poster. Domi and JD sing lead themselves, on nearly everything.

This time the duo established the concept before writing the notes. Every part was mapped out before recording so that each note had a purpose, while the density of the playing and harmony remained intact. Blue Note calls the result chamber pop with far more notes and constantly changing meters.

In September the duo sets out on a 25-city American tour, opening September 8 in their hometown of Dallas and closing October 15 in Albuquerque. Before any of that, they had already road-tested the new material live, playing instrumental versions at the Toronto and Montreal jazz festivals — a preview for an audience that had not yet heard the words.

The title is a question nobody asked. Where the debut leaned on famous guests, the second album pushes the compositions and their fully written orchestral parts to the front.