Today, prolific indie R&B singer-songwriter Dawn Richard and multi-instrumentalist and composer Spencer Zahn release Quiet in a World Full of Noise, their second collaborative album. Quiet in a World Full of Noise is available in full wherever you stream music, and can be purchased on CD or LP from the Merge Store. Peak Vinyl orders include a limited-edition, two-sided 22.75” x 30” folded newsprint poster.

Among the highlights of Quiet in a World Full of Noise is its title track, the composition of which made the urgency of the project abundantly clear to the collaborators, with Zahn recalling, “When Dawn sent the lyrics back to me for this song, I knew that we had the concept and space for our second album.” It is the call for and creation of the space evoked by the title. 

Following 2022’s stripped-down and otherworldly Pigments, the duo’s second album highlights a common collaborative ethos, a genuine sense of musical curiosity, and a cosmopolitan eagerness to escape the conventions of genre. “Diets” puts on display the duo’s stark, confessional lyricism; “I got rid of the people who weren’t good for me / I drop my fake friends like I drop calories,” Richard sings, comparing cutting out harmful relationships and habits to weight loss.  

The making of Quiet in a World Full of Noise began in 2023 in upstate New York. Fresh from a break-up, Zahn sat at his piano and poured himself into writing and recording instrumental compositions. “I wrote all these stream-of-consciousness pieces on piano, and they were eerie, spacious piano tracks,” he says. He used a piano that had been unconventionally tuned to the room rather than to standard pitch. These oddly tuned, eerie instrumental recordings were never intended to be an album. Six months later, he listened to the recordings again and sent them to Richard who immediately recognized their potential as the next album. 

On Quiet in a World Full of Noise, Richard channels the emotional impact of traumatic experiences of loss into her lyrics and vocal performances, which are left bare and human, raw and unprocessed. On the album’s creation, Richards says, “I went into the studio—I did not write this down—and purged it out, and then I didn’t change anything after it. It was honestly the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Our family has a distorted view of therapy; I’ve had to do a lot of healing on my own. So this was a moment of severe openness, sharing that moment with the world. But again, for some reason, when I work with Spencer, there’s a vulnerability that I tap into that I don’t do with anyone else. And I’m unafraid to try.” By turns intimate, soul-baring, spectral, and startling, Quiet in a World Full of Noise expands the definitions of what constitutes progressive, avant-garde R&B by rewriting them altogether. 

Richard and Zahn will be touring North America this coming fall, with performances in Chicago, New York, Boston, and more. Tickets are on sale now and can be purchased here.

Dawn Richard & Spencer Zahn on tour:
Oct 22 Minneapolis, MN – Dakota
Oct 23 Milwaukee, WI – Turner Hall Ballroom
Oct 24 Chicago, IL – Old Town School of Folk Music
Oct 26 Pittsburgh, PA – The Andy Warhol Museum
Oct 27 Toronto, ON – Lula Lounge
Oct 29 Brooklyn, NY – National Sawdust
Oct 30 Brooklyn, NY – National Stardust
Nov 02 Philadelphia, PA – First Unitarian Church
Nov 03 Boston, MA – Institute of Contemporary Art
Nov 16 London, UK – London Jazz Festival
Dec 02 Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon