Dijon pushed himself to the brink while creating his acclaimed second studio album, Baby . But it wasn’t the music that sent him there — it was a postmodern novel about the creation of ballistic missiles in Europe at the close of World War II. In a recent interview with Pitchfork , the musician revealed that a friend attempted to stage an intervention to stop him from reading Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow due to the adverse psychological effects it seemed to have on him.

“I was having a really hard time with the record,” Dijon said. “Like, psychosis-level shit.” His friend had warned him against Gravity’s Rainbow , saying, “You shouldn’t do that, it’s so paranoid.” He turned out to be right. “I was having mania,” Dijon said. “I was having all sorts of ups and downs and a tru

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