The purpose built next generation interstellar Dawn Richard thread

lmao!! xp

haha that is excellent

lol probs to this editor on a completely disingenuous subhead

Diddy ex-affiliate Dawn Richard's fantastic full-length debut, Goldenheart, follows in the unheralded tradition of black musicians drawing emotional power from Tolkien tropes.

props*

just gonna post that here for posterity

http://i.imgur.com/vKaczXd.png

dunno if this happens to everyone else, but when "Riot" starts I think Ne-Yo and Pitbull's "Give Me Everything."

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 28 January 2013 14:31 (4 hours ago) Bookmark

katherine upthread nailed it with 'moves like jagger' (and in truth i really wish she hadn't)

Dawn incites a riot like it's a tedious but necessary admin task that she might as well get out of the way before concentrating on something more interesting.

I've not been particularly motivated to go back to this over the last week or so although I do actually prefer Warfaire to Frequency. That middle section leading up to 86 doesn't really leave an impression on me at all though.

idk it's not really focused on working on eurodance banger terms though, it's an r&b album track (not a single) that appropriates dance signifiers and interprets them through dawn's worldview

for me they're a welcome and necessary expansion of the frame dawn explores the themes of this album in - opening out from the internal personal/private by showing how the same often platitudinous emotional constructs power life outside (LET'S riot, WE gleux), or more specifically clubland with the semiology of club redemption (djs saving lives) dressing for battle, warlike build and release, and the subsequent legends told to inspire the future and rewrite the past

i'd probably agree this sort of thing worked better on armor on but then that was a much more upfront record in personal terms than this is, which gave it a degree more specificity and oomph

(they're = the "banger" cuts)

Previous post feels otm to me.

I think albums with such heavy-handed (which i think it is fairly undeniably - which is not to say that that is a weakness or failure or anything), super-personalised aesthetics (in an overall sense - the shimmery electro-dance r&b plus the glossy denatured vocals plus the sci-fi/fantasy/historical tropes - speaking of which I like to think "northern lights" is a phillip pullman ref and if it was that would support r|t|c's interpretative angle for this more than just about anything else possibly could) often have this sense of either being compelling or off-putting, but more than that, they switch from one to the other between listens, or you can feel both reactions simultaneously, like you can be really enjoying a tune and then suddenly it's like the sun disappears behind the clouds as you reframe what you're listening to in a less attractive interpretative light (or vice versa).

So I think on the one hand it's (too) easy for boosters to glibly dismiss criticisms with "you haven't listened to this enough" but on the other hand I think this is an album for which snap judgements are particularly ill-suited and likely to be unfair - because in accounting (word chosen deliberately) for that sense of discomfort and (literally) "mixed feelings" we will punish this album over something less impressive and interesting but more unambiguous in hitting the smaller targets it aims for.

see if you'd just said "this alb has its weaknesses but will always be miles ahead of some basic bitch album by [insert wholemeal artist]" we coulda had some hearty squabbling going, have u learned nothing from rolling goon

Tim plainly didn't take the chorus of "Riot" to heart.

"this alb has its weaknesses but will always be miles ahead of some basic bitch album by [insert wholemeal artist]"

this too

does anyone else kinda hear 'northern lights'/'frequency' as a heavily abstracted molly suite

i'm gonna have to defend the basic bitch canon here

yeah I don't really mean that in general but OTOH has there been a better basic bitch album in the past twelve months? There have been good ones but not better ones I think.

xxp well ok not that heavily i guess

do you mean that's the part of the album where dawn and some dude are seriously high

"some dude" in the general rather than specific sense

nah we blazed

lol

yeah that part of the album. i kind hesitate to say so actually cos once u have it in mind then listening to 'frequency' suddenly becomes fairly hilarious

yeah it does give the lyrics a certain... precision that was not present before

oh! btw sorry can i just do this, tim (and all) u have to hear this recent find

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-InRBr2rc_4

http://www.discogs.com/Angel-Moore-Ecstasy/release/3117035

some sort of local south florida radio minor hit from 94 apparently

Surprised that nobody here has made anything of the elements of the album that tend more towards deep house.

Sonically it plays as an updated version of what Gaelle was doing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTdKU2pNjh8

Surprised that nobody here has made anything of the elements of the album that tend more towards deep house.

cannot listen to youtubes at work (also on that note sorry rtc I will revert in due course) - pray tell what are the deep house elements on Goldenheart.

How on earth did you uncover that, rtc? Amazing.

Any sort of radio exposure happening w/any of this over in the US? Curious as to how tracks off this wld sit outside of the album, &c.

<3 that Gaelle album, never stopped listening to it.

pray tell what are the deep house elements on Goldenheart.

Well it rings pretty clear to me on the first half of the album and crops up elsewhere (Though the dub elements may to an extent overshadow it on Pretty Wicked Things). In terms of tonality, mood and the steady insistence of the beats, there are pretty clear parallels.

The problem with vocal deep house is that the sample size is relatively small in terms of artistic output so there is a lot of room for mischaracterisation. But looking at Richard next to Gaelle, Lisa Shaw and Lysa Aya Trenier I do hear undeniable similarities.

Listening to the tracks would probably illustrate the point better than reading anything I have to say about it.

http://i48.tinypic.com/xptsed.gif

Perfect

holy fucking shit that angel moore song

also lol it's totally obvious how rtc found it

it doesn't seem to exist in mp3 form. maybe it never has!

also if tsrobodo's gonna introduce me to artists like gaelle let's hold off on the clowning gifs this once

never

also lol it's totally obvious how rtc found it

― lex pretend, Tuesday, 29 January 2013 12:24 (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

alas this deduction is incorrect as i already have a youtube of 'moments in love' permanently embedded in my soul

furthermore, http://www68.zippyshare.com/v/98805385/file.html

YASSSSSS, hq and everything

Okay woah @ Angel Moore.

Forgot about that Gaelle record!

The snarky bitchcraft is kinda lost on me.

IMO that gif expresses something rather more complex and ambiguous than snarky bitchcraft

Basically, I want to believe that you might be onto something tsrobodo, but the idea that "in terms of tonality, mood and the steady insistence of the beats, there are pretty clear parallels" works only at such a level of remove that I think it becomes meaningless.

Even with the artists you mentioned the similarity strikes me as one born of the fact that vocal deep house takes its cues from R&B, and there is a lot of other R&B I'd choose before Dawn to characterise that relationship of proximity.

Tim you so are good at explaining things nicely, I would send my kids to your school

I'd be interested in learning more about the "clapper trend" that was mentioned upthread. I hear dry, plug-and-play claps and hats and think "this sounds like footwork" but could somebody elaborate?

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2012/03/clapping_songs_rihanna_birthday_cake_big_sean_dance_ass.php

gif selection is a fine art yo don't ever get it twisted

that said, "bitchcraft" is totes going on my cv

bonus track

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/the-juice/1536269/dawn-richards-nlx-exclusive-song-premiere

keep feeling like tsrobodo has a point about something, just not necessarily this album (yet)

praps if the q was like, what is it that makes zaki ibrahim sound like an eclectic house diva traveller but not ever really like an r&b singer despite notional similarity

yeah zaki is def. a better fit for this idea

Much of the rhetoric I've seen in the R&B and hip-hop threads here can be distilled down to "snarky bitchcraft" and while I haven't been around long enough to know if that's the norm, you guys do seem to love talking 'around' each other.

I'll concede that my characterisation was clumsy and lazy, but I wasn't implying that she took direct cues from deep house or even that they operate within the same frame of stylistic reference. I just feel that considering the extents to which popular motifs in dance, electronic and R&B music have shifted over the past decade, there is a notable sonic correlation between the two.

Curious as to what R&B you'd choose from the mid 00's that better characterises that parallel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwNx5kuxxV4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZlC3vaOr6Y

Curious as to what R&B you'd choose from the mid 00's that better characterises that parallel.

Why are the mid 00's particularly relevant here? (that's a non snarky bitchcraft q)