BY TER STAFF

After announcing his new album and launching his own website, more details have been revealed about Frank Ocean’s sophomore album, the follow-up to 2012’s critically acclaimed channel, ORANGE.

In an interview with the BBC’s Gilles Peterson, French musician and pianist Christophe Chassol revealed that he was invited by Ocean to help with the singer/song-writer’s second album, and worked on speech harmonization with Ocean in the famous studio.

“I asked him when I came, ‘how he heard about me?’ He told me his friend Diplo was listening a lot to ‘Indiamore’ (Chassol’s 2013 album), and they started to listen to it, and they were wondering how I was doing the speech harmonization, so he called me” Chassol told the BBC Radio 6 host about the collaboration.

“The guy is smart. He’s really smart. The way he works in the studio is really cool. He has a printer, he has a lot of pictures of architecture, contemporary art, a lot of pictures of different kinds of things” Chassol continued, referring to Ocean’s studio environment.

Chassol also revealed that Rick Rubin visited the studio whilst he was there, perhaps an implication that the album is in its final stages ahead of its Summer release. “At some point, a guy came into the studio, a guy with a long beard. We start talking and then he leaves and they tell me it’s Rick Rubin! I didn’t know the guy!”

While the collaboration may not be news to some, Ocean’s sophomore album has been highly awaited (it even grabbed the top spot for our most anticipated album of the year), and since announcing that the album would be released in July through his Tumblr, the anticipation for the album has reached new heights.

You can listen to the full interview with Chassol here.