Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

I kinda liked WAP but this seems to be not good.

Both 'We Appreciate Power' and this are more palatable to my ears than 90% of Art Angels, so a modicum of cautious optimism is in order. I do agree with Moka that the choruses are insolently repetitive but that was already true of 'Oblivion', wasn't it?

it's ok but mostly leaves me feeling like she can do a lot better. the vocal melody is nice enough but her vocals are even more indistinct than usual and don't seem to quite fit with the backing track which is very bland and anonymous (blaming i_o for this), so there's not a lot to actually grab onto. if this track were on art angels (songwriting-wise it would have been right at home, it's just the production lets it down) it would have been much more densely packed with hooks

i guess a positive is i can barely make out anything she's saying so i have no idea if the lyrics are as silly as "we appreciate power"

It’s weird that the more she improves her production techniques, the more generic she sounds to me.

Nothing weird about it tbh.

I haven't listened to Art Angels in a while, but on first listen one of the melodies feels lifted from one of those songs.

i think it's just a very typically grimes melody, the sort that was all over art angels. that's not a bad thing at all, i just wish the backing was better (and i'm largely blaming her choice of collaborator, i_o, for this since his solo work sounds very similarly bland from the little i listened)

improving production at the cost of distinctiveness is a story as old as production itself

this all has a certain “jokers trick” aspect to it ...

"my goal is to make climate change fun (lol..??)" - joker

tangentially, I did end up seeing the Grimes-boosted Nicole Dollanganger last week and it was a pretty good show!

this is decent but definitely more in the realm of grimes music that poppy et al. have moved into while she was between albums, and thus sounds less exciting

I mean it's weird because supposedly the more you master something the more 'freely' you can push the limit of your knowledge. I mean Picasso had to learn and master how to paint properly first before he evolved it into his own style. According to her Visions was created in Garageband in a week since she couldn't leave her home due to a fever. Even with the rushed job and some of the presets she used it probably is her most creative and unique sounding album.

That said, I didn't know who i_o was or that he was a co-producer in this one, and apparently he is an edm producer which is a red flag in itself, so I'll also send blame of the genericness of this one his way. Is there a genre more generic than EDM in the past decade? I think that might be one of the few genres where it's extremely difficult to tell an artists production work one from another.

it's also the difference between working on an album for 2 weeks and working on an album for 2 years

But also every producer knows that you get the most interesting results out of a piece of gear the first time you use it, when you're exciting and don't really know what you're doing yet.

usually yes

(exciting -> excited)

Also creating without the expectation of an audience vs the knowledge of a huge audience, and the usual curve of your technical expertise and experience going up while the number of good ideas that are most 'you' go down/get used up, etc.

Yes those are good points. There’s a lot of pressure on her in this album’s cycle that wasn’t there before and there have been several signs, like behind the curtain drama with her label and the constant re-scheduling.

it's also the difference between working on an album for 2 weeks and working on an album for 2 years

― flappy bird, Thursday, September 5, 2019 9:28 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Makes me think of Brian Eno saying how deadlines and small budgets usually make for great records and how no deadlines and endless budgets don’t

My feeling is ppl are jumping to conclusions way too fast itt; this is more how I hoped “art angels” era would sound, maybe not a home run as a single but I could see being either disappointed or exciting depending on what follows ... not mad at refinement though, a lot of ilx hated “the present lover” for similar reasons & imo that album is a total classic

i personally like the track but i also don't have a particular allegiance to any single grimes style or sound or aesthetic, i'd have been disappointed if she'd stuck to a Visions template. it's hard to remember now how some of her earlier stuff found its way into chillwave threads (where even then something like "Vanessa" stood out as superior to most of the other tracks being posted and that's where i first heard of her) and it's probably good she didn't stick to a predictable path.

Oh, I like this much more than WAP

love the way this song sounds

I've listened to it a few more times and I'm enjoying it more than my first listen. I guess the reservation I really have with it is that it sounds like the coda to some longer, more fleshed out song. Which it very well could be, in context of the album, but it's a pretty irritating choice for a first single.

This new song is great, easily the most I've ever enjoyed her music.

this sounds like a good song to do the macarena to

Hmmmmmmm...

.@Grimezsz is awesome. That is all.

— Andrew Yang (@AndrewYang) September 9, 2019

symphonia mmxx (my wait is ubi)

Pursuing that coveted World Princess vote

Well, there's not much of a song but I still like this more than almost anything she's done since Visions (I REALLY disliked Art Angels and the following stuff).
So I might be interested in her output again... that's good !

i don't get the people who hated art angels but like this because this just sounds like a sketch of an art angels song to me (in a negative way not in positive realiti demo comparison lol)

Well, I guess that's the more understated, minimalist, atmospheric/dreamy, demo aspect that I prefer in her work.
I loved Visions but couldn't stand the OTT production approach of Art Angels.

Likewise.

And that new track isn't great or anything. But it doesn't annoy me and is nice enough so that's already a big improvement to me !

https://www.residentadvisor.net/news/44536

will relisten to hear this putative optimization!

that show looks rad and i wish i were anywhere near miami so i could go. i had missed the new single until seeing that article. i rlly like it but i want to remix it and add a B section after the breakdown.

unmixed/mastered version of new album has leaked, probably the closest anyone will get to ever hearing this damn thing

why the pessimism? maybe there's something weird going on but the current excuse that they're waiting for vinyl to be pressed before releasing all formats at the same time seems plausible

Is it worth the hunt?

Ok I couldn't resist. I assume the mixing is still being worked out. "So Heavy" in particular sounds like it needs some work done in there but it could sound really good.

Black Swan Blues is a nice surprise, she very rarely uses acoustic guitars as a base composition and it's also a very welcome variation in sound compared to the rest of the album.

from what I understand the leak is far from complete, not only in terms of songs but the mixing too

I ended up deleting it after a third listen. I don't like the current aesthetics of it for the most part, the whole sound she is going for in here is very outdated to my ears, it sounds to me like she's trying to beautify some of the worst musical trends of the 90's - but I recon it might improve with further mixing. Song I ended up liking the most is Black Swan Blues but it doesn't sound much like a Grimes song.

I don't know, it seems like a bit of mess tbh and I wouldn't be that surprised if it gets vaulted. I can kind of understand a bit of her previous frustration with it. There some good ideas in there but there's been so much work and time wasted on it that the simplest solution would be to vault it instead of trying to fix it and do something new. Or maybe release one first expecting it to get mixed reviews and then a second, better album a few months apart. It wouldn't be a bad marketing strategy tbh, let the critics tear you down and then lure them back in. Wasn't that the original plan? To do one for the label and another for her? Or am I misremembering how it went?

Was Turrican a Grimes fan?

omg that's the link. only threads with Turrican DNA can be opened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH0kfH04U68

new single "so heavy i fell through the earth" is decent but feels more like a moody album track than an album opener or single?

miss anthropocene finally has a tracklist and a release date (feb 21) too

https://i.imgur.com/vE1AGZX.jpg

01 So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth (Art Mix)
02 Darkseid (Grimes & 潘PAN)
03 Delete Forever
04 Violence (Grimes & i_o)
05 4ÆM
06 New Gods
07 My Name is Dark
08 You’ll miss me when I’m not around
09 Before the fever
10 IDORU

new single "so heavy i fell through the earth" is decent but feels more like a moody album track than an album opener or single?

haha I was just thinking I wish she'd tack We Appreciate Power onto the record.

The deluxe version of the album includes WAP

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/534925843097714718/644893194684989488/image0.jpg

i like that cover