Katy B - On A Mission (4 April 2011) - hype, anticipation &c

Much as I like to keep an open mind I kind of filed bnh away with adult contempop like lighthouse family. Music for media dads to drive their 6th form drama student kids back from school by. This perception was perpetuated by a terrible band made up of said drama students who subjected our school hall to a smugly barefoot rendition of 'midnight at the oasis' circa 1994. In retrospect this might have been the moment I turned to punk rock for my teenage kicks.

i loved "midnight at the oasis" so much at the time! i never got the impression it was "for" anyone in particular, let alone...that oddly specific demographic you cite, possibly because i was 11 at the time and a massive BNH fan myself. even bought their album on CD, had a bit of an early gay-crush on n'dea davenport

I swear one of those kids had fucking toerings on and they had a member called Cool Dave who played the fucking tambourine. I'm sure there was a silly hat in there too but maybe that's my memory running away with me. Still, that evening in the school hall was awful, lex. Like the whole of everything that was wrong about 1993 just served up on an assembly stage to a crowd of unsuspecting teens. We needed a Birbalsingh of our own...

dream on dreamer>>>

and they had a member called Cool Dave who played the fucking tambourine

oh man this shit is too real <3

Hate to interrupt this mid-90s episode of Later With Jools Holland but honestly this album is unfuckable-with - from Witches Brew right through to Perfect Stranger is an incredible run.

Ooh... That live thing sounded horribly like the brand new heavies. Oh well, at least it confirms that, yes, sadly at 30 years old I have developed a crush on a celebrity.

― ford lopatin (dog latin), Thursday, March 31, 2011 10:54 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://www.famemagazine.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Katy-B2.jpg

What is wrong with having a crush on a celebrity at age 30? God forbid a 30 year old finds someone attractive!!!

Plus Brand New Heavies is great. Siedah Garrett all the way.

I think there is a legitimate fear of live musicianship with music like this less because of whether Brand New Heavies in and of themselves were good and more because historically dance music and dance-pop music that starts going down that path quickly has gone to shit.

Well anyway her voice is great.

i don't know much abt dance music or pop and whatnot

but that louder song is really really good

i like the other ones too, i watched all the youtubes.

they do real cool stuff with vocal effects, reminds me of old dub effects but like more computer space age stuff, like extending the ends of lines until all these layers of decaying echo are bouncing off each other

that's probably pretty common in dance music i've never heard, i bet, but yeah my rock dude ref point is old dub shit i guess.

Lilsoulbrother, naw I'm just surprised at myself really as I've never been a celebrity crush kinda guy, not even in my teens, so to find myself kind of sighing and rearranging my hair when I see a photo or vid is very peculiar and not characteristic of me at all. Still she is lovely, isn't she? Sigh....

standing at the bar
with my friend oliviaaa

<3 <3

NO BOY IS ON A LEVEL BELIEVE ME

standing at the bar
with my friend oliviaaa

<3 <3

― lex pretend, Monday, 4 April 2011 12:24 (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

Best line imo.

finally heard this. its good but not as great as it could have been. theres a radio 1 sort of approach to the production which tires me out after a while, very LOUD and impossible to ignore, and i do like lots of the production touches, but despite what i said upthread about her being the person who really leads these songs rather than the producers, her songwriting ability actually gets stretched a bit thin over a full album (and what was she doing with the shout outs at the end?!!?) and you start to think she doesnt have quite as many ideas as first thought. she ends up resorting to a lot of the same sort of melodic tricks over and over. lovely voice throughout, but i think she could do with a writing partner. is only the first album though, so hey.

it would have been stronger if they included new versions of as i and tell me i think.

What's wrong with the shout outs?

The shout outs are so sweet.

the other katy b (bush) would never do shout outs

I've heard the shout outs once and I never want to hear them again. Save it for the sleevenotes.

exactly. it just makes her sound amateur to be honest. its not a hip hop record. but if it was at least a separate track like on kanyes first album that would make it a bit better.

the shoutouts only bothered me by virtue of the track they're spoken over being really great and jazzy - like if I was a DJ I guess I'd think it a waste of a good instrumental

this album is great imo+btw+fuiud

There's a Britishness about this album which I am completely incapable of grappling with, even though it sounds like it was programmed by robots for me to love it

shout outs on an album = almost always a waste of plastic/filespace

im thinking that shes actually just not that good at crafting album cuts, shes better just doing straight up club hits like lights on, as i, and so on. obv the hit to miss ratio of songs like that means that you cant always come up with the goods doing that kind of thing all the time, but those are still her best moments - the rest just doesnt really match up. so maybe she *is* better off being a producers puppet, or at least co-pupeteering herself. i do need to hear the album more though.

ehh I don't really get to go to funky nights or whatever much but I'm not sure the difference between 'club track' and 'album track' on this is as big or clear as you're suggesting

Titchy you are insanely wrong about virtually everything here. Given most of the album was produced by Geeneus and Zinc, who know their way around a club track, the distinction you're drawing is virtually non-existent. Almost everything here is a club track, or at least a club-friendly track.

I find the shout outs kind of sweet actually, it's like having the credits roll on what's otherwise a slightly underwhelming closer (relative to the rest of the album which is A+++).

I think they confirm the album's modest, reverential touch which draws her to me more and stops her becoming another Lily Allen or whoever.

matt, i dont care who produced it. i think what i am saying is simply that there are about 3 obvious club hits on this, the rest isnt quite as strong, not cos of the producers, but cos katy didnt come up with songs as strong as say, lights on (which render them album tracks, though not as strong as 'album material' cos shes aiming for club hit status each time out). which might seem unfair (do like that shes trying to insert more of her personality into this than most garage or funky vocalists have done/would do) but then this as you said, this is a club album. but maybe i wasnt paying enough attention. i should listen a few more times to make sure ive not missed anything.

which draws her to me more

careful, dog.

love the line "now i love a bad boy mentality/ but i don't want to be visiting no jail"

and the next one - "just know when there's someone out there mocking me / be my gangster when it's time to get real" <3

GUYS THIS AMEN BREAK ON "WITCHES BREW" IS FUCKING SLAAAAYYYING ME

Yeah, I like how it's all slow motion.

<3 Broken Record

yeah i've fully come round to "broken record". remixes from todd the god and jacques greene also pretty u&k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34uavBaXoW8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3qYPokxKnY

there really isn't a single song on the album that i don't love to some extent - even the ones i think are slightly weaker still make me very fond of them somehow

you didn't like 'broken record' at first? that kind of makes me a little sad...

i did like it, i just didn't think it was AMAZING like "katy on a mission" and "lights on". that is rectified and i now think it's very AMAZING.

I'm not big on "Broken Record" as a whole but i LOVE the vocal breakdown bit.

i guess i can see it; it does remind me of radiohead a little bit

compare:

i would toss and turn at night with your voice in my head

vs.

miss could you stop the noise i'm tryna get some rest

it's a stretch for sure, but not that much of one

Zinc remix is nice too xps

yeah i had to come around on 'broken record' - looooove the ascending/descending vocal in the verses

compositionally, it's great! (plz do not read this as = soundz like Radiohead) I love the way the ending mantra repeated over and over again--a common trope in pop music--ties into the 'broken record' conceit, I love the R&B harmonizing towards the end (I assume this is what NumberNone is referring to as the 'vocal breakdown'), the little countermelodies underneath that long note in the chorus...I think the songwriting chops add a whole new dimension to Katy's style and keeps things from turning into "guess the beat" (though I like that game)

i love this woman -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/apr/24/soundtrack-of-my-life-katy-b
altho she should really mention mamas gun over baduizm (not that baduizm is bad, its not)

be interesting to see what happens when she goes a bit R&B as she prob will (even if its just trying her hand at it, rather than coverting full on)

Is this going to get a US release any time soon?

'I used to like a lot of R'n'B, but when I analysed most of those songs, and looked at the chord progression or whatever, there wasn't much there'

bet lex would love this if anyone else said it