Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

preaching

that is, I completely agree and participate in spreading the word (demo)

I couldn't find a physical copy of Art Angels (any format) anywhere in London yesterday. I traipsed all over, looking.

Either the NME has some influence still or it's a complete irrelevance, not sure which.

don't think the physical copy is out for another few days still

agree with the all love for Realiti (demo)

runners-up at the moment are probably Butterfly, Artangels and Flesh Without Blood

I couldn't find a physical copy of Art Angels (any format) anywhere in London yesterday. I traipsed all over, looking.

released December 11

oh, OK. Thanks! Could've sworn I'd seen it on shelves a few weeks ago when released digitally. Just my imagination.

This showed up in my mailbox today.

Nice to finally have it to take with me.

Serious question: had this album been released in February, would it rate as high on year end-lists?

To draw a comparison, Bjork released her album in January and it made it to most "mid-year lists" but it seems everybody forgot about it 10 months later when they hype died down.

Maybe that Bjork album just wasn't that sticky when it came down to it?

Like, the Dawn Richard album came out really early this year, there was 0 hype outside ILM and yet I still listen to it.

I have no idea if Art Angels is going to wear off in a few months. But this is my problem with year-end lists, really. I don't really decide what the "best albums of a year" were until halfway through the next one, but then you lose the zeitgeisty sense of ~now~ I guess.

The Bjork album is somewhere on most of the EOY lists I've seen, and that's doing pretty well for a dense, dark, often inaccessible and intensely personal album from an artist several decades into their career. Certainly not comparable to a light, fun, energetic pop record from an artist who's been one of the big buzz artists of the last couple of years.

To draw a comparison, Bjork released her album in January and it made it to most "mid-year lists" but it seems everybody forgot about it 10 months later when they hype died down.

wait this doesn't make any sense? it being on most EOY lists surely means people haven't forgotten about it?

and yeah its appeal isn't really along the lines of constant social media conversation (plus a lot of björk's post-album activity, like the moma exhibition, had an underwhelming reception) - that doesn't mean it's been forgotten

oh wait sorry i misread, you said mid-year lists

(but it HAS been on virtually every EOY list as well)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi2N5KHgO80

i'm looking at this thread on my phone so i'm just assuming markers embedded the blink 182 "i miss you" video

FADER put out a short documentary on her. I just posted the video.

But, for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1tAYmMjLdY

(It is here that I will note that I don’t have Flash installed on this machine, so when I’m posting from Safari, my primary browser, I actually can’t see my own videos once I’ve posted them. All of those Blink embeds become whitespace.)

markers did you preserve her "ween r canonical" tweet? I think she deleted it

I think I might’ve seen that because I think I might’ve confused Ween with Wheatus at first or something like that. I don’t think I have the tweet, but it looks like it happened around ten days or so ago.

There is this: https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=from%3Agrimezsz%20ween&src=typd

I'm still not sure how I feel about this album. At times it seems like exactly the right direction for her to go in after Visions, at other times maybe more like a noble misfire, or an awkward transitional album. The production sometimes seems to be trying too hard to fill up every nook and cranny of the song, whereas Visions and "Realiti (Demo)" were much more spacious. Maybe it's churlish to complain about an album having too many good ideas, but that's kind of where I'm at, for now at least.

I wish I had more to say about this album, but I just like it fine and that's about it. It's good and catchy.

I so love albums with too many ideas :) It's definitely a matter of taste, but the overflow of ideas is a huge part of why this is my favorite album of 15.

i picked this up today, pretty disappointing for me, but then again i don't really like pop music. much preferred "visions" and "giedi primes".

TLG are you doing a list this yr

no, i don't really listen to enough new music to warrant that

maybe a house/techno singles list but not an albums thing or anything like that

i did pick up a lot of reissues but reissues lists are pretty boring imo

the "kill v maim" / "artangels" / "easily" stretch in the middle is pretty undeniable

i can't believe my favorite song on Art Angels (Pin) isn't even in the top 10 most listened to songs from the album on the Spotify listening stats...inconceivable!

Is there some kind of sample clearance problem with "Butterfly"? Just got the LP today, and getting the digital copy (because Spotify is garbage, mobile Spotify doubly so) was alerted that "due to a publishing issue" it would be omitted from the download :(

I mean I've still got it on the actual record, it's just hard to carry around a turntable everywhere

It does have a sample.

http://youtu.be/E2ARRas4R4A

It might be difficult to get clearance on it.

It's weird, though, it's for sale digitally everywhere with (AFAICT) the sample intact. Not a huge deal, though, just grabbed it from slsk

Did anyone else notice that the physical CD of Art Angels includes the REALiTi demo as a bonus track?

Yep. Got it yesterday.

i love grimes so much and art angels has brightened my year more than anything else thank you claire

Love this album too, probably even more than visions, which I never fully connected with at the time. I have gone back to it after listening to Art Angels and it's definitely better Than I remembered.

yeah this is better than visions, even though "circumambient" is still my favorite grimes song

I don’t know who Grimes is, but I hope to find out in 2016.

visions is in my top 5 of the decade but, it has some clunkers. the singing in "eight" (production is cool, i like that synth that sounds like its saying SCHTROINGTHSCHTROINGTH) and some of the last stretch like "nightmusic". i listened to art angels the other day for the first time since post-release binge and it felt hollow at several moments that used to be euphoric. i loved it so much at first that i turned it off attributing my reaction to my mood, now i'm afraid to listen again D-:

xp

http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/828259/26629230/1445890787463/grimes_rihanna_00.jpg

more like fart angels. I do like this, though

the art/fart pun is the pizza! of all art departments

going back to listen to visions the difference in production is so stark, almost makes me pine for a re-recorded version now that she's leveled up but I'd rather just have new songs especially given the tedious musing the two versions of realiti provoked

this album is absolutely my favourite of the year tho. I can't remember being as immediately and consistently besotted with a record. it is pure energy. most of the discourse around it seemed way off to me, but lindsay zoladz's line about it being superhero music for introverts deserves a ✓ and mb expansion. there's something v nourishing about it, a source of power I have been continually diving into. it's both hugely expansive in the range it covers and incredibly dense and fast-paced, she really charges through it – the percussion is the key secret ingredient giving it a radio/dj set energy – & the whole thing is such a blast, it's been something I've just played it over and over (and I'm not really the looping type). I maintain that righteous is the best description of the vox. the depth & layers are still there but they're also pushed right into the foreground which gives it an immediacy and all this wonderful high drama that wasn't possible in the older stuff. so much of it is pure exhilarating release; if you skipped at random there's a good chance you'd land in a moment of her holding some long vowel sound over the top of the roar of whatever enormous machine she happens to be piloting. this being balanced of course by her supreme poise elsewhere: coolly dispatching all-comers when she comes in on world princess pt 2, or that impossibly exquisite flattened singing on the verse of butterfly which butters you up perfectly for the chorus - which is the point on my first listen at which I threw my hands up and decided there was going to be no accounting for this album bc it's just too much.

I was content with my own untranslatable private obsession with this album, but I was chatting to my now-distant best friend I grew up with, who doesn't chat much about music and afaik had never expressed any prior knowledge of or interest in grimes, and he totally unprovoked started raving about it, and I felt that warm glow of satisfaction, which I have disavowed in the past as cheap adolescent tribalism, but which I think can be a legit recognition of that shared experience, knowing he was hearing it just right and feeling the same way. anyway this album just rules, I am so happy about it

good post

yes, I enjoyed reading this!

^

so much of it is pure exhilarating release; if you skipped at random there's a good chance you'd land in a moment of her holding some long vowel sound over the top of the roar of whatever enormous machine she happens to be piloting.

beautifully put & otm

Big love for the wordless coos in "Belly of the Beat" which is just sheer beauty front to back. Haven't tired of any of it yet. Am cross-pollinating my daughters from Tay-Tay to Grimes, the other morning I caught one of them singing the hook from "California", WIN.

i haven't listened to this in a few weeks but I hear 'Pin' spinning in my head every day

ogmor: nourishing

yes, exactly, thank you for sharing

i love that there are two versions of realiti and that we have them both. imagine this was never a problem before music was recorded