Release Date: 29/08/25 - ok (Coloured Vinyl)
This record will be released
With ‘ok’, his new album and ACT debut, French trumpeter daoud offers a quiet manifesto - a record shaped by contrast and contradiction, by collapse and the stubborn act of beginning again. He explains: “The whole record is built around the concept of reluctant acceptance of things that you can’t control. All right, fuck it, fine, I guess.”
Artist: daoud
Genre:
Label:
The album explores failure, loss, repetition and the soft absurdity of pretending everything’s fine. Across 14
tracks, daoud weaves tragedy and humour, chaos and tenderness, melody and noise into a rich and
emotionally charged soundscape.
At its core, ‘ok’ is a jazz record treated like anything but a jazz record. The foundation of the music was
created live in the studio, together with keyboardist Leo Colman, double bassist Louis Navarro, drummer
Silvan Strauss, electric bassist / guitarist / keyboardist Jules Minck and keyboardist Kuz. The editing of these
recordings was more akin to a pop production, yet the sounds, pads and textures added afterwards are
subtle and refined.
The elaborate production is topped by a striking line-up of international musical guests who lend the music
even more facets and emotions: corto.alto (trombone / GB), Rosie Frater-Taylor (guitar and vocals / UK),
Mehdi Nassouli (guembri / MOR), Ludivine Issambourg (flute / FR), Teis Semey (guitar / NL), Kuba Więcek
(alto saxophone / PL) and Julien Fillion (tenor saxophone / CA).
The result sounds organic and immediate, as if you feel the production more than hear it. The album blends
jazz, hip-hop, rock, disco, Afrobeat and drum & bass - not as genres to explore, but as emotional textures in
a broader narrative.
What emerges is a tone both satirical and melancholic, where humour masks deeper sadness, and childish
playfulness veils inner tension. ‘ok’ is an album of contradictions: lightness built on weight, sincerity laced with irony, warmth streaked with anxiety. There’s a deep sense of emotional dissonance - exposing what hides
behind the act of saying ‘ok’ when you’re not.
It’s the sound of things breaking quietly, of resilience masked by routine. This duality runs through everything
daoud creates - including the visual world of ‘ok’. The album cover features a childhood photo of him,
capturing the vulnerability and raw innocence that echo throughout the music, the covers of the digital singles
are illustrated with simple, childlike black marker drawings. The aesthetic draws on fragility, impermanence,
and the bittersweet tension between playfulness and pain.
‘ok’ is the distilled essence of that journey - sonically, emotionally, and spiritually. “Contrasts and
contradictions shove us and rattle us and make us feel things in the way that homogeneous environments
don't.” says daoud. “For me, this is where human emotions live.” It is the scope and depth of emotions that
make the album so extraordinary.
About the artist
“I've been obsessed with the idea of being a circus clown since I was like 3 years old”, daoud recalls the starting point of his life as a musician. “I must have seen a clown on TV or somewhere else playing the trumpet and thought that this was the instrument that a clown had to play. So that's how I picked the trumpet - not out of classical ambition, but for its absurd theatricality.” That tension in the figure of the clown - between the comic and the tragic, the graceful and the ridiculous - has defined daoud’s relationship with music ever since. After a few early attempts at classical and jazz training, he dropped out. He wandered across Europe and the US, lived in backrooms, delivered pizzas, worked at a funeral home, played football and boxed obsessively. He quit music altogether more than once. “I think I gave up playing music because it meant so much to me that I needed to prove I could still exist without it.” Eventually, he returned to music - on his own terms. Trumpeter, producer, beatmaker, composer, engineer - he taught himself everything. “I’m so grateful I’m alive during the Internet era. If you want to learn something, you just can.” He works 18 hours a day, seven days a week. His self-produced 2024 debut ‘GOOD BOY’, recorded in just three days, drew immediate attention for its emotional force and genre-defying clarity. Since then, daoud has produced and written for other artists in pop and hip-hop, while continuing to refine his own singular voice.
This Vinyl product is a:
- Limited Edition
- Coloured Vinyl
If this album is something you would like to buy when it's released, drop us a line on chat@capsulerecords.co.uk or let us know when you are next in store.
