Stereo Embers The Podcast 0056: Vanessa Daou

“When You Always Knew You Were On Your Own Planet” Growing up, Vanessa Daou always knew she was meant to be an artist. Growing up in The Virgin Islands, Daou escaped a difficult childhood by immersing herself in the creative world. An avid reader, the young Daou was inspired early on by bookslike Harold And The Purple Crayon and the Little Prince and, taking her cue from characters who fashioned their own universes, Daou began fashioning her own. As idiosyncratic as Stereolab, as smooth as Sade and as timeless as Sarah Vaughan,Daou’s body of work is a seamless, often mesmerizing confluence of electronica, jazz, trip-hop, poetry and soul. In this intimate conversation Daou talks to Alex about the liberation of dance, discovering Leonard Cohen and what it was like to sit down and collaborate with Erica Jong. And speaking of Jong, Daou’s groundbreaking album Zipless: Songs From The Works Of Erica Jong is finally getting released on vinyl in December.