A record with two names
Andrew Ashong’s second EP arrived with enough ambiguity in its presentation to invite two titles. The digital catalogue calls the 27 January 2014 release simply Andrew Ashong, while contemporary reviewers commonly used Special, the name of its opening track. Those descriptions point to the same record: three songs, 16 minutes, released through Ashong’s Which Way label as catalogue number WW001. The sequence is “Special,” “Never Dreamed” and “Love the Way.” Apple Music supplies the date, length and digital title; Resident Advisor identifies the label, catalogue number and vinyl sequence.
The distinction is worth maintaining because the record was not formally presented everywhere as Special. Yet the unofficial title also makes intuitive sense. “Special” occupies the A-side and establishes the EP’s pace: patient guitar figures, hovering harmonies and drums that move without forcing the song toward a conventional climax. The title therefore became useful critical shorthand, appearing in January coverage from Pitchfork, Resident Advisor and Fact.
By 18 February, the record had been available for three weeks. That was enough time to recognize that it was doing more than extending the success of “Flowers,” Ashong’s earlier collaboration with Detroit producer and DJ Theo Parrish. The new EP clarified who Ashong was when the famous collaborator’s name was absent from the sleeve: a songwriter, producer, instrumentalist and singer whose music could connect club rhythm, intimate soul and the open-ended repetition of a private jam.
What ‘Flowers’ introduced—and concealed
“Flowers” had given Ashong a remarkable public entrance. Released through Parrish’s Sound Signature label in 2012, it was produced and arranged by both musicians. Ashong’s own track page credits him with drums, percussion, acoustic guitar, Fender Rhodes and slap bass, while Parrish played ARP synthesizer bass. That division of labour matters. “Flowers” was not merely a Theo Parrish production with an unfamiliar vocalist placed over it; Ashong helped construct the record’s instrumental identity. His artist-controlled SoundCloud page preserves those credits.
The collaboration then acquired an audience beyond the original record’s scale. At Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide Awards in January 2013, “Flowers” won Track of the Year in a public vote reported as approximately 2,000 strong. Crack’s account of the ceremony records both the result and Ashong’s appearance onstage to accept it.
That recognition created a potentially misleading first impression. Because “Flowers” circulated through a celebrated Detroit dance label and Peterson’s radio community, Ashong could be understood chiefly as a house-adjacent singer. But the record itself already complicated that role: its extended form, live instrumentation and unhurried vocal phrasing sat between a club track and a soul performance. The 2014 EP did not reject that language. It shifted the balance until the songs, rather than the dance floor, became the organizing principle.
The move was subtle enough that contemporary critics described it differently. Pitchfork’s review of “Love the Way” contrasted its languor with the longer, more percussive motion of “Flowers.” Fact heard a fuller, more band-like presentation built from electric guitar, bass, Rhodes-style keys and drums. Resident Advisor emphasized loose drumming, layered voices and a jazz-inflected atmosphere. Taken together, those reactions describe a follow-up that retained Ashong’s preference for groove while reducing its obligation to behave like a club record.
Three songs, three uses of restraint
“Special” opens by declining to rush. Its guitar does not function as a strummed singer-songwriter foundation or as a sharply divided funk pattern. Instead, the phrases hang around the voice, leaving gaps that become part of the arrangement. Keyboards soften the edges, the rhythm section holds a relaxed internal pulse, and stacked vocals gradually make a solitary performance feel communal. The track’s drama comes from accumulation rather than a drop, key change or oversized chorus.
That construction explains why early descriptions reached for psychedelic soul and jazz as often as R&B. In a December profile, The Guardian compared Ashong’s terrain with Shuggie Otis, Roy Ayers and Bill Withers while describing “Special” as an extended acoustic reverie. Those names locate a sensibility, not a set of borrowed components. Ashong’s music shares their interest in instrumental colour and suspended time, but the cloudy vocal production and flexible rhythmic grid belong to his own moment.
“Never Dreamed” tightens the frame without becoming hurried. Guitar and keyboards trade attention, while the drums give the song shape through feel rather than sheer impact. Here there is unusually direct evidence of Ashong’s authorship: his own upload credits the song as written, performed and produced by him and names Which Way Records, with 27 January as its release date. The SoundCloud posting originated as an excerpt from a Gilles Peterson broadcast before the EP’s arrival, making it both a first-party credit and a surviving trace of the record’s advance circulation.
The closing “Love the Way” is the clearest demonstration of Ashong using repetition as arrangement. Its central vocal thought circles back on itself, but each return lands differently as harmonies overlap and the rhythm gains weight. What can initially seem like an uncomplicated love song becomes a study in placement: one voice answers another, pauses acquire emphasis, and the groove expands without breaking its calm surface. Ashong’s corresponding artist-controlled track page credits him as writer, producer and performer and again gives 27 January as the release date.
Those credits caution against treating the EP’s intimacy as evidence of slight construction. The record sounds relaxed because its parts are given space, not because little is happening. Across the three tracks, voices are doubled and separated, instrumental lines enter without crowding one another, and drums supply motion while preserving looseness. Restraint is the compositional method.
The musician before the breakthrough
The public chronology begins with “Flowers,” but Ashong’s musical life did not. In a pre-release conversation with The Ransom Note, he said he had already been recording music for more than a decade and playing records publicly for more than 15 years. He also explained that he usually wrote on guitar, although bass and drums appealed to him because they formed a groove’s foundation.
His description of making “Take It Slow,” the other substantial song associated with the Flowers release, is revealing. Ashong recalled beginning with a rhythm he vocalized, adding synthesizer bass, then guitar and vocals. That account should not be mistaken for a session log for the 2014 EP. It does, however, show how he thought: rhythm, harmony and singing were stages within one process rather than separate tasks reserved for specialists.
The same interview explains how Parrish entered Ashong’s orbit. Ashong said they met through Ade Fakile and the London club Plastic People after Ashong collected Parrish from Heathrow. The anecdote places the eventual collaboration inside a social and musical network rather than a conventional discovery narrative. Ashong was already a DJ and record-maker moving through London’s listening culture when the partnership developed.
That background makes Which Way significant. Pitchfork described it as Ashong’s own label, while Resident Advisor identified the EP as its first catalogue entry, WW001. Moving from Sound Signature to Which Way did not announce a break with Parrish; nothing in the contemporary evidence supports that drama. It did allow the next release to place Ashong’s name, songs and production at the centre.
London without a tidy scene
Ashong was associated closely with Forest Hill in South London, but he resisted reducing his musical community to a postcode. In The Ransom Note interview, he described London as a network in which people lived, worked and listened in different areas, allowing tastes to overlap across the city. His answer is more illuminating than a catalogue of neighbourhood scenes: it suggests why his records move so easily among soul, jazz, house, funk and the habits of a working DJ.
The Guardian supplied another part of that history, reporting that Ashong spent his teenage years searching for disco, funk and soul records, listening to an older brother’s collection and DJing by 16. Record collecting is audible in his command of pacing, but the EP does not resemble a historical re-enactment. Vintage electric keyboards, guitar and vocal harmony are treated as living materials. Their function is emotional and rhythmic, not decorative proof of authenticity.
That difference separates Ashong from a straightforward soul revivalist. The EP carries the warmth of older recordings while retaining the haze, repetition and slightly unstable pulse familiar from underground dance music. Its songs can reward close listening at home without losing the bodily logic of a DJ’s record collection. Ashong did not have to choose between those settings because his practice had developed inside both.
A small record that changed the frame
Three songs could not answer every question raised by “Flowers,” and the EP wisely did not try. It offered something more focused: evidence that the earlier collaboration’s appeal came partly from a musical identity Ashong could sustain on his own. The follow-up preserved long-form patience but redirected attention toward songwriting. It preserved groove but loosened its relationship to club utility. Most importantly, it placed Ashong’s own performance and production credits where a casual listener might previously have seen only Parrish’s influence.
The record’s two names ultimately describe its achievement from different angles. Andrew Ashong asserts authorship; Special identifies the song through which many listeners entered. Neither requires the EP to be framed as a dramatic reinvention. It is better understood as a change in perspective. “Flowers” introduced a collaborative sound, while these three tracks brought its quieter architect into view.
As of February 2014, that was the important development. Ashong had followed an award-winning record without duplicating its most obvious features. In doing so, he made a compact release feel like a fuller introduction: not simply the voice from “Flowers,” but the musician arranging the guitars, keyboards, drums and layered vocals around it.