Record reviews The Weeknd’s new album is the best-sounding pop record, but it also succumbs to overcrowding and outright cornea.

Pop / Album

The Weeknd, Dawn FM, XO. ★★★

The Weekndin new album Dawn FM reveals at its outset its finest feature: it forces you to wait. “What’s the hurry,” the spokesman asks after a minute and a half of introversion, and GasolineThe chorus of the song does not start until one and a half minutes.

Likewise the third song How Do I Make You Love Me? overlapping Take My Breath -single is heard for tens of seconds breathing. And again, the verse can be waited for another minute.

Irresistibly long arcs are a clear backlash to the impatience of the new pop, the Tiktok concentration and the two-minute hits. On the other hand, they and extended mixes are an integral part of the disco’s history – specifically the large and epic disco Dawn from FM is squeezed even by force.

With drugs but a Canadian who started his career at state-of-the-art R&B 11 years ago Abel Tesfaye i.e. The Weeknd got to his previous record After Hours (2019) for everything. The record sounded mirrored in every direction, aptly for the past and enough for the future. Sen Singlet In Your Eyes and Save Your Tears were big hits, Blinding Lights downright megalomaniacal.

The best possible stars were found in the set of hits: hit factor Max Martin and known as an electronic musician Daniel Lopatin.

Dawn FM is After Hours sister plate. It is more pathologically predecessor than the 1980s and less modern. Lopatin has been making most of the songs, as you can hear from the icing sugar sprinkled on their surfaces. He is on the record completely in his element.

An alias used by Lopatin on his own records Oneohtrix Point Never is based on an incorrectly heard radio frequency of 106.7. In his hometown of Boston, the channel played soft favorites. Oneohtrix Point Never’s music has always sounded like a still-life but twisted memories of the jings and cracks of FM radios.

The album of 2020 Magic Oneohtrix Point Never mimicked – albeit foggyly – the shape of a radio. No Nightmares -Slovak was visited by Weeknd. Dawn FM is like a mirror image of a disc. It’s also built in radio format with intermittent spikes and days, but instead of the sound impressionism of Oneohtrix Point Never, everything is photorealistically accurate. Dawn FM is the best – sounding pop record, but not terribly any more.

Weeknd himself has described a novelty in a traffic jam to get stuck in a tunnel – except the tunnel is a “purgatory” and the light at its end is “death”.

He has been saying for years that he intends to have his own generation Michael Jackson. With a career plan so clear, it’s a bit of a selfish project to try to make an album that sounds exactly from Jackson’s time – let’s be the most obvious Jackson song on the album. Sacrifice the best possible disco function.

On the other hand, the time is right for Weeknd’s project, and that’s where his world-famous reputation is based.

Music editor Kelefa Sannehin an excellent book on the history of pop by genre Major Labels presents the history of the disco as the history of the underdog, a style that provoked genuine backlash.

By the 2010s, the genres have merged, and that’s why Weeknd works for everyone: nearly a hundred million streaming listeners and critics as well as Radio Nova’s most played song.

Dawn FM is by far the most retrofuturistic record of Weeknd’s career. It does not mimic the past, but seeks to rebuild it in the most crystalline way possible and from the present perspective.

Timeliness is emphasized by honoring the past and leaving the foundations visible. Take My Breathin knock nods To Donna Summer, Best Friends There is a hint in the tab Britney Spears, How Do I Make Love With Me? reminds me of Pet Shop Boys.

However, the references lack playfulness and joy, unlike those who used the same method Dua Lipan Future Nostalgia from the disc.

Weeknd is a hero of loose sex and decadence, a serious and unhappy artist, but seriousness and unhappiness do not necessarily mean overcrowding or outright cornea.

After Hours the coolness has gotten into it Dawn on FM annoying bloating, as with megastars often.

The record ends with the words, “To see heaven, you must be in heaven. Peace be with you. ”

The poem recites Jim Carrey.

Critic’s Choices: Visual artist Tuomas A. Laitinen’s debut album is a perfect hit

Experimental / album

TAL, Sapiduz, Um. ★★★★

Mysterious meritated in their installations Tuomas A. Laitinen debut album Sapiduz surprise: it is an international first-class Finnish debut. The album features shredded corals and lasers beveling huge church-like spaces. Their sources of inspiration are clear. Holly Herndon and Lyra Pramukin sound conversion is the cornerstone technology of the electronic avant-garde. Even more Sapiduzilla crackle Tim Heckerin and the ambient fragments of Oneohtrix Point Never, which produced the Weeknd album featured below. For the mentioned stars, Laitinen would not disappear at all, but would rather miss their records Raven Matrix -thing like a song. If some music from Finland is worth drumming abroad, then Sapiduz.

Indie / rock / albums

Bad Sauna, Potslojo, All That Plazz. ★★

1980s-1990s the guitar track was the coolest way, the band came up with something previously unheard of. Twisting cracks is now three decades easier, but still many are content to emulate their role models. Felix Lybeckin The second album of Bad Saunan – a really bad name by the way – is played by a full – blooded record shelf band that tries nothing more than to copy the sound of Dinosaur Jr. into Finnish. For the elderly, the band’s nostalgia is enough. In Finland, there is a group of people who are glowing without criticism if someone here is enthusiastic about their Indian favorite. Therefore harmless All at home -single was Radio Helsinki’s most played song last year.

Electronic / EP

Burial, Antidawn EP, Hyperdub. ★★★

21st century chief electronic artist, Londoner Burial, has been releasing the album for 14 years. Antidawn however, the ep is full-length, 43 minutes. Its electromagnetic spiritism snaps and rattles, but it’s not built from scratching dance music, into post-rave falls. The album is a pulseless sound collage, maybe even Burial’s notion of concrete music and as such is related The Caretaker and producers of demented electronic music such as Demdike Stare. It gets its power from the monochromaticity of cloudy winter days, only with headphones.

Indie / electronic / single

Let’s Eat Grandma, Happy New Year, Transgressive. ★★★★★

Of the year the most adorable pop song in the beginning is worth your pick. Brittiduo Let’s Eat Grandman previous album I’m All Ears was my 2018 favorite. Since then, the duo has unraveled the tragedy of life, they told The Guardian in a recent interview. It is therefore natural that Happy New Year is a happy, euphoric and ecstatic song about heart friendship. Its second consecutive raises are appropriate Robyn, suitably Melodrama-I drive Lordea and at the end of the fireworks. In Finland, its sparkling synth riff – not quite Van Halen’s Jump but almost – would certainly fit Sanni. The duo’s third album, Two Ribbons, will be published in April.