The purpose built next generation interstellar Dawn Richard thread

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)

Why are the mid 00's particularly relevant here?

Nothing inherently special about the 00's in regards to this but the artists I referenced all released albums between 04 and 05. We could draw parallels with artists working concurrently but where's the fun in that?

Just to clarify I'm not implying a linear evolution from one to the other but speaking more in terms of how they incorporate prevalent trends into their music.

http://i.imgur.com/lH3Clvq.gif

^^^ not getting mixed up in that

I got the physical v of this yesterday, am a little surprised at how...low-budget the art & layout are. no problem! I bought it this way since I'm willing to pay a $3 premium for the "artifact"; but I guess they're thinking this'll sell primarily digitally so why try very hard with the physical one. obv I don't really care because THE MUSIC MAN

obv i like that gif

u like the bitchcraft now but just wait til season 6

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.

how long do i have to stare at this before something happens

so like, there's some dance elements... like house... and there's some moody vibes... like deep house...

female vocals too

to be really real in a boring way jill scott and angie stone have already got that deep house shit locked down, dawn missed a trick by not being around to get on some prog house extravaga biz back in 1994 or so.

Like you could see her and the drum club just ~vibing~

i will never understand why bitches never summon quentin harris

b/c it's like staring into the real of their careers

oh i see what u mean, cos the r&b diva ego resists being as entwined with the music as house makes it

yeah

quentin harris remixes of jill or seriously next level

*are

especially "hate on me" >>>>>>

man I even like that jill scott / 4 hero collabo.

http://www73.zippyshare.com/v/66448497/file.html

did you guys ever hear his adele 'set fire to the rain' last year? removed from soundcloud now so here's the re up

wait, so were jill and angie gettin it in with the hauskru back in 90-something frealz and if so where do I hear that?

Not back in 90-something, and not frealz (to my knowledge).

Discussion above is in oblique reference to Quentin Harris remixes of "Whatever" and (less obliquely) "Hate On Me", both of which are - what - 5 years old? Harris seems to have Scott jones and remixed a billion other tunes as well but I can't vouch as to their quality.

Obv. Angie ruled clubland with several remixes of "Wish I Didn't Miss You Anymore", though that's not deep house.

But vocally and musically both have a kind of summer-tinted warmth that is just more in keeping with deep house reigning principles than Dawn.

Teedra's another vocalist who'd be queen of the scene of if she deigned to go there.

http://youtu.be/SNEeWYUwgd8

not to overly prolong the halfbaked house diversion but i'm belatedly feeling the hell out of this simply correction right now - marsha you are very much in the wrong game

oh wow this latest thread revive looks interesting. mouth watering in anticipation of listening later

house marsha!!!!

there were some good remixes of floetry back in the day iirc? (sadly my itunes does not rc)

http://youtu.be/BnDQ_T9NP-U
http://youtu.be/5Kis5RHIV3E

there's these

tangential but i remember when i felt "soulful house" circa 2009 was particularly fecund thinking there were so many nice standalone songs, i wonder what it'd be like if someone like monique bingham (more skilled and charismatic a performer than so many popular nu-soul divas) did an album. realised it probably wouldnt really work in any useful way

― r|t|c, Friday, 6 July 2012 13:11 (6 months ago) Bookmark

posted on the zaki ibrahim thread fwiw

all this talk and the l phonix & yllavation mix i posted on the bubblers thread (which is in practical terms a 12 track acid jazz nu-soul album in the vivifying form of a 20 track freewheeling partymixx) got me musing in general

as for poor dawn i find i haven't too much to say, but then i suppose i've already done my bit

it probably should be noted that missy 'hit em wit da hee' remix video is a towering larp&b forebearer

Ahem anyway going back to talking about the album - I think the fact that exactly the same vocal treatment is used on every single track goes some way towards explaining accusations of samey-ness. I'm not really that keen on the autotune that's all over this, she's evidently got a great voice and it just flattens everything out, especially the high notes and melisma when she should be sounding her most expressive. It gets kind of frustrating after an hour. I mean she used the same trick over most of Armor On so maybe I wouldn't care if the songs were better but I can't help but feel a lack of joie de vivre here.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, January 15, 2013 1:42 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is pretty much how i feel about this after one listen :(

all of dawn's work has been like this for me though, even LTTP took weeks to fully work its way into my heart. it does feel unfair to criticize as 'samey' what is clearly the work of an artist with a very specific and rather unique voice ("voice" in the narrative sense). the autotune does seem to keep me at army's length though, and does sort of flatten its emotional range a bit. but again, only one listen in. and i suspect the car is not the ideal place to listen to this, particularly initially

I'm in the same boat. I don't see myself ever listening to this album again :/

Dawn's voice is great and the production is pristine, but it exhausts its tricks so early and keeps repeating them. And like Matt said, that wouldn't matter so much if the songs carried any weight, but a lot of them sort of suck

what tricks are even repeated?! sonically there's something distinct about every song here. i'm sorry it doesn't have the wide-ranging variety of eg the weeknd though

I like that the vocal treatment stays the same, it sounds like she's personally taking your hand and leading the listener through a changing environment, to my ears anyway

I mean, the stylistic shifts from song to song are so huge that by the time Clair de Lune starts up I feel like she's "covered all possible bases".

Also, the Clair de Lune outro jeeeez I can't even deal with it, it's so I-don't-give-a-fuck to just sing along to the most famous piano solo ever that I actually get the sensation that this woman has successfully connected her human experience to the length of my musical consciousness and gave that overplayed piece new life in my headspace

My reaction to that was to be reminded of Janelle Monae and think "does Diddy make all of his protégées sing over Claire de Lune or does he gravitate towards protégées who would think ending their album by singing over Claire de Lune is awesome?"

A big part of Armor On's appeal was the surprise; it introduced such a well-defined aesthetic and kept doling out twists on it, some little some big, throughout its entire playtime. I don't get that sense at all from this one, though. So much of it felt familiar from the start; it doesn't have the same sense of invention that Armor On did.

Oh, I didn't get very far with Janelle Monae. Did she do something similar?

nm I looked it up

It's a different thing to my ears, singing a naked, solo single voice over a complete performance of the most famous piano piece? It's akin to those moments when a song can't contain the limits of the singer's conviction and they slip into "Amazing Grace"

lol I was just about to post it

I have to give that Janelle Monae album another shot. I only listened once and thought it sounded like she'd grafted her vocals onto a pre-existing album, like, there was very little interaction between track and voice. (And this is the case, apparently?) Seeing her live was so amazing tho, such a great band, I can't wait for new stuff from her

if it doesn't sound like t-pain i basically have no idea what people are talking about when autotune gets invoked

I see myself listening to this album again, but the first listen didn't quite knock me out like I'd hoped it would on the basis of "'86" and her 2012 singles. The uniformity is definitely going to be the obstacle; the only songs I have any clear memory of right now despite having first listened to the record last night are "'86" and the one that covers/samples/whatever Peter Gabriel. I dunno, I need spend more time marinating in it.

It's finally starting to open up to me after about five or six listens, but it's taken that long for the individual songs to separate themselves.

For me the album actually got less interesting the more I listened to it. It was around listen five that I realized lots of the potential I heard in my early listens wasn't going to be realized; probably around listen six that I realized, ok, I'm done