Neurodivergent underground cult figure BDEE (pronounced “Bee-Dee”, a tribute to Dee Dee Ramone) has written and recorded over 2000 songs and put out nearly 200 releases in his 26 years of activity as a musician. Like outsider icons Wesley Willis and Daniel Johnston, BDEE has hovered at the margins while steadily growing a cult following drawn to his one-of-a-kind personality. In BDEE’s case, his rambunctious live shows, prolific output, and dizzying versatility have also contributed to his near-mythical stature among his followers. Over the years, the Jamaican import has encompassed punk, shoegaze, hip hop, indie, goth, and everything in between, making it next to impossible to put what he does into a single box.
Brian Anthony Abraham Donaldson was born in Montego Bay, Jamaica and lives on Long Island, NY. After a decade of recording alone in his bedroom, BDEE slowly warmed up to the idea of playing with other musicians, forming BDEE + the venomous oranges in 2008 and eventually linking up with producer/synth player Will Forthman. Forthman helped refine some of BDEE’s best tracks into the oranges’ 2016 debut dark/ambient, which was championed by NYC-area radio tastemakers like WNYU and WUSB.
In 2015, the group recruited bassist Nick Femister, rounding out the core trio of the project. This core, complimented by a rotating group of talented drummers and session players, recorded and released the Warpspeed EP in 2018. Like so many other musicians, BDEE focused inward when the pandemic hit — except the venomous oranges didn’t actually see him in person for nearly 2 years while they worked on what would become Ultraviolet Spectrum.
Lyrics by Forthman feature recurring themes — coping with isolation and being gaslit, living with mental illness, and life on the autism spectrum. The Femister-penned “Daysleeper” speaks of times when BDEE would often stay up for 72 hours straight perfecting his latest release and expressing frustration that his music isn’t getting noticed as much as it deserves to be. “Shattered Glass” speaks of the desire to raise the bar so high that it goes through the roof as the glass ceiling is shattered and the fear of being out of step with ever-changing cultural shifts looms…
“Lost In My Senses” reflects on the past and the urge to give up, while opening track “Distress Signal” sees the band posing the question “Where do we go from here?” after getting sucked into an inter-dimensional void (a continuation of the space theme from Warpspeed). Finally, the title track, tackles the pervasive sense of feeling like a square peg trying to fit-in — a universal feeling, for sure, but one that hits especially close to home for people on the spectrum, for whom fitting-in is a matter of practical survival that requires herculean effort in the face of constant adversity.
BDEE + the venomous oranges crafted Ultraviolet Spectrum in the hopes that likeminded neurodivergents will be able to relate. All too often, people on the spectrum find themselves on the outside looking in. This new set of songs is the band’s way of speaking to that experience. Ultraviolet Spectrum goes out into the world as a beacon of support, as well as an attempt to help eliminate negative taboos surrounding autism, mental illness, and all developmental “disabilities.” BDEE + the venomous oranges want to personally let you know that acting and thinking differently than “normies” should not be considered a disability.
As we continue to move through the 21st century, we should look ahead to a world where there’s room for everyone on this wonderful, challenging ultraviolet spectrum we call life!
