Dev Hynes, also known as Blood Orange, has produced and written songs for a variety of artists including Solange, Sky Ferreira, Florence and the Machine, and Theophilus London. The past few years have seen him on a steady rise, with his signature composition style inhabiting the interstitial space between pop, R&B, and indie rock.

Ahead of his newly released Blood Orange album, Cupid Deluxe, Hynes delivered a lecture at New York University on Wednesday evening, discussing his unique synesthetic condition and how it informs his compositions. Synesthesia is a condition wherein different senses are mixed in the brain, such as hearing colors or tasting sounds. Hynes’ condition involves the fusion of his hearing and visualization, so he can “see” sounds. Hynes was invisible for the duration of the lecture, with the focus on an audio-visual presentation over which he chronicled his experiences as a musician with synesthesia. Hynes spoke about his childhood, including an anecdote about a music teacher who was the first to recognize that a young Dev had this unique condition. The projection displayed a color wheel spectrum that spun and fanned as Hynes described the textured and tonal “streamers floating around” that he experiences when listening to music.

Hynes took us through the colorful inspiration for his score to Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto, providing a look into the color palettes that comprise his musical sensibilities. He described his growth in accepting synesthesia as a unique composition tool, rather than a hindrance. In his days performing as Lightspeed Champion, his condition was often so overwhelming that he couldn’t visit loud bars or venues without feeling distraught. During this time, he relied on mathematical and algorithmic composition methods to compensate for the visual chaos in his mind. Now he composes by “starting with a solid base and mixing colors” for his ideas to have “a home to live in,” setting the environment and texture of an idea before seeing it through to arrangement.

Imagery of liquid dyes floating and spinning in centrifugal motion were a backdrop for the accompanying music, which culminated at the closing piece for Palo Alto. Hynes explained the creation of the environments for each of the film’s characters, and how each character represented a different color that functioned within the larger palette for the film. Hynes also admitted to purposely recapitulating thematic and melodic elements throughout some of his albums as Blood Orange and as a songwriter, and that some of these “palettes” work especially well for him musically and visually.

This is especially true on Cupid Deluxe where Hynes has incorporated some of the thematic elements from his last album Coastal Grooves into the fabric of the new release. Beyond explanation as a purely synesthetic impetus, Hynes winsomely informed the audience that some of these repeated ideas were simply because he “likes how they sound.”

Dev Hynes will be performing as Blood Orange tonight at 285 Kent in Brooklyn, for the Cupid Deluxe release party. Cupid Deluxe is now available on iTunes.