Last year, Jennifer Vanilla shared their album Castle in the Sky via Sinderlyn Records. A year after the initial release of Castle in the Sky, an expanded edition of the record arrives on December 1, 2023. The limited edition expanded sky blue vinyl LP is accompanied by a digital expanded version of the record, featuring remixes and reworks from Jerry Paper, musclecars, and Love Injection.
Today they share “Take Me For A Ride (Jerry Paper Remix).” Jerry Paper and Jennfier Vanilla have been long time supporters of each other, touring, collaborating, and wearing each other’s merch, see story in Jennifer Vanilla’s 2019 Vogue article.
Jennifer Vanilla on “Take Me For A Ride (Jerry Paper Remix)” –
Take Me For a Ride has always been an engine revver for the album, but Jerry Paper’s signature pep in this remix really fuels the tank with diesel gas. I’ve been secretly opening my live set with this remix for the past year because it pumps me up like a spiritual steroid. I imagine I’m soaring through the blue on a magic carpet with the wind whipping through my hair, coasting fearlessly in the ever present now. Dance extra hard to this one, and if you ride long enough, you shall be rewarded with a breakbeat.
In the early 21st century on the bustling streets of New York City, Jennifer Vanilla is a container, a portal, a joy delivery system, a self help regimen, a social mirror, a Times Square celebrity, a shark-toothed advertiser, a kicky talk show host and an ebullient mascot.
Collaboratively crafted with co – writer/co – producer Brian Abelson (who also releases music as See Other and other aliases on labels Toucan Sounds and Sorry Records), Jennifer Vanilla’s debut full length Castle in the Sky is a deft and mercurial “jennifreaky” journey, traversing 90s dance music, no wave, post – punk, art pop, new age and experimental R&B.
“Consider this an invitation, I’ll be your guide,” Vanilla beckons on the album’s “Take Me For A Ride,” which, like much of the album, is driven by their nimble and virtuosic vocal delivery. Variously steely, theatrical, sensuous and authoritative, Vanilla’s vocals harken the sparkling precision of Ann Steel, the growling tenacity of Laurie Anderson and the wispy tenderness of Shelley Duvall in Faerie Tale Theatre.
Jennifer Vanilla performances often are exercises in the transformation of reality through fantasy, testing the limits thereof, while the songs of Castle in the Sky are an artifact of that laboratory. Many of these songs took on numerous incarnations over the course of years before arriving at their album form, mutated in direct response to audience reaction.
