Sade - Soldier of Love

most awkwardly worded slam in awhile

perhaps you are just a bit thick?

dude deej has good taste what are you talking about

dude this has nothing to do with you - this is about deej trolling me like a little child.

Look titchy I'll give you "slightly dated" and that many of the songs have "the same rhythm" - for me these are two of her selling points. But "cheap" sounding??

I mean, I would actually love this album even more if it DID sound cheap in places but I am just not hearin it

tbh the production is my beef w/this - the percussion's quantized "perfectly" & you can hear it whereas all the way through the last one the feel that you were listening to a group of musicians playing something live & for me that was a real plus to Sade records: that "buncha badass musicians laying deep in the groove and holding it down" feeling. I dig this album but the "live" feel is harder to come by than it was on "lovers rock" & all previous points.

OTOH "cheap"/"tinny": umm no

granted, it might just be my PC speakers. but the thing im talking about is the drum programming/sounds. they sound a bit cheap to me. the sounds are a little ersatz. like the type of hip hop drum sounds you could get on sound modules 10-12 years ago. which is why i think it sounds a bit cheap/dated/tinny. not to the level where it interferes with my enjoyment, but be that easy, in another time, or the safest place are the type of production values i would personally would have liked to see more of.

granted, it might just be my PC speakers

hahahaha amazing self pwn here

PC speakers classify sounds as "African-American" instead of "black."

so when are the Studio remixes coming out???????

i've been saying for YEARS now that balearic sade re-edits have been necessary and yet they STILL don't exist to my knowledge

so when are the Studio remixes coming out???????

― Tracer Hand, Friday, February 19, 2010 10:33 AM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

for some reason my brain processed this as rhythm & sound remixes. which would be nice too.

hahahaha amazing self pwn here

right, cos youre all listening to it on setups like this?

http://www.rent-the-rig.com/images/home_images/homepagepic.jpg

this thread

http://www.sonyatv.com/writers/images/image/sade_2%281%29.jpg

hurts sade

titchy where did you get that photo of my living room

i was trying to find an image of what i plug my ipod into

actually I use bass-heavy noise-canceling headphones on my iPhone and 5.1 surround sound on both my computer and my home theater but if I had the space, I would take those in a heartbeat

so basically yes I am saying "don't be all audiophile snotty about things if you don't have the hardware"

what im saying is this shit still sounds like it could have been done by didos producers

lets agree to disagree

http://www.coolest-toys.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/kids_with_j_s.gif

"josh, this color-timing is hack work"

good album though :)

I can sort of see the too-drum-machiney critique on "Bring Me Home", but it doesn't bother me at all because the machine-like aspect of it is so foregrounded. It's supposed to be remorseless, unfeeling. Which sets it up for a thrilling (to me) contrast with all those lush harmonies (what are there, like six, seven, eight voices on this track?) "Bring Me Home" is a hell of a dark track. What in God's name that high keening wail is I have no idea. A bogle? A wight?

Right in front of "Bring Me Home" is "Be That Easy", which could practically be Mazzy Star, or the Rolling Stones on a particularly highly-injected day. It feels very live, very loose - you've got brushes on the drums, an organ with a nice fuzzy Leslie sound, some acoustic guitar. And after it you've got "In Another Time", also very live feeling, after-hours sticks on the snare rim, soft triplet arpeggios on the guitar, the trumpet player hasn't gone home yet..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/feb/22/sade-poor-reputation-uk

I always thought Sade was closer to trip-hop than torch muzak, an idea borne out by the title track of her new album, which approaches the metallic vigour of Tricky. It's just a shame the rest of Soldier of Love is so lacking in melodic lustre. Because it would have been fun, and not a little contentious, to proclaim her an idiosyncratic artist with a distinctive vision.

I hate the correlation of design and music, and his stealing my trip-hop idea from me.

hmmm is that guy even right in his description? my impression was that in the US sade IS seen as torch-muzak, but in the UK has a more serious profile and committed muso fanbase.

i guess everybody thinks that her "real" fans are elsewhere?

t would have been fun, and not a little contentious, to proclaim her an idiosyncratic artist with a distinctive vision

well her vision is pretty distinctive - she's been working on it relentlessly for the last 25 years

as far as "idiosyncratic" goes i don't understand why everybody's supposed to be bjork or something

Now, this could simply be A Flock of Seagulls syndrome, whereby a group deemed a joke in Britain is revered in the States.

gtfo

She's like – ahem – late eighties Bryan Ferry. I love many songs, but the albums bore me with their concentration on a couple of musical elements if I'm not in the right mood.

It's a different way of listening - I know this sounds total capn save a Sade but I sort of want the same things from her as I do techno - it's meditative, you can dip in and out at will

thats not captain save a sade yr being unneccessarily defensive. trying to legitimize her by arguing that shes **actually** trip hop is so lame & a huge disservice to her music

I wouldn't say she was "actually" trip-hop, only that "Soldier of Love" would fit nicely on Massive Attack's Protection.

good massage music.

especially if youre having a nice massage in a nice lift.

arguing that shes **actually** trip hop

Are you able to point out where I did this?

Sade doesn't need me to "legitimize" her, she is about as legit as it gets. What I'm trying to do is understand where the criticisms (not live enough, too cheap sounding, too boring) are coming from. Because I am honestly interesting. I'm kicking against these criticisms partially because so far I disagree but also because I hope my kicking makes the critics sharpen their own explanations. Which is the entire point of debate as I understand it.

Finally, if anything I write here helps people hear what I hear in Sade, I think that's great, but it'll only happen if what I write is actually interesting. A caveat that applies to you too.

Haha "I am honestly interested" I should have said ... how Freudian can you get

that piece is right that sade seems dismissed by UK critics in a way that she doesn't seem to be in the US, and i think it's right about why this is the case - it reflects really, really poorly on UK critics! it's less otm about sade's actual music though, and very wrong about the new album.

i suspect a lot of her critics think that "classiness", "sophistication" and "tastefulness" are inherently negative traits, so...they are morons, basically.

i love all those traits. though sade does sometimes take those traits too far into a soporific area. and shes done that even more so since the 90s. but as far as trip hop, she basically did it early on (and really well) with tracks like cherish the day and feel no pain. i kinda agree with 1 of the commenters in that guardian piece who says her last 'great' album was in 1992. the newer stuff for all the good songs, is sonically kinda stuck in the leftovers of that stuff.

anyway, all the stuff about being poorly regarded depends which critics youre talking about - rock critics obv hate it, though thats not surprising, pretty much everyone else doesnt. there are more music critics than those who write for the broadsheets.

its weird hearing songs like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybuyILrDvaw where she/they did used to do something a bit out of their comfort zone.

ahhh i love that DVD! She has like five videos that are basically all of her riding a horse.

This idea that Sade needs to get out of her comfort zone is interesting. You never hear this kind of demand from other people who basically make the same sort of music over and over, i.e. Basic Channel or Frank Sinatra.

i <3 my comfort zone

totally disagree that she hasn't done anything "new" since '92 - both lovers rock and soldier of love feel really distinct from her early stuff to me; a lot more intimate - well, she's always been intimate, but less abstractly intimate, more deeply personal; a lot warmer, inward-looking, familial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q80-W19XUic&fmt=34

love deluxe era instrumental b-side

never said she didnt do anything new. and i dont mean she should reinvent herself - that critic from the guardian was well off base by saying she didnt have a singular vision, she does, which is what people who dont like her find annoying lol - but the occasional break from downtempo-ness is not a bad thing. i think she can sometimes be too aware of her 'classiness' and its really easy to not remotely venture out of that if you want to keep everything in that orderly perfectly contained kind of vibe that she does, so a song like never as good is just a nice change of pace.

that make some room track is great btw.

anyone else listen to morning bird and think of didos here with me when she sings 'i will not run'?

Not really but I do know I find that song utterly heartbreaking.

safest place is the most heartbreaking song.

errr, I would say Babyfather strays from her comfort zone.

Anyway I agree with both arguments here - I do think Sade has evolved substantially since '92, becoming increasing warm and organic and maybe somehow singer-songrwiter-ish. Yet, Love Deluxe remains their most unique (and IMHO interesting) output.

yeah i mean 'love deluxe' is my favorite sade record (altho my favorite sade SONGS are on her other ones) these days

well thats not entirely true -- kiss of life is on lovedeluxe