FKA twigs

check ur dms

death metal

I love the ideal version of this album more than I love how this sounds - I am totally on board with zeitgeisty sensual goth-crunk - but I just don't think there's enough here to sell it. There's no intensity and I after two consecutive listens back-to-back I'm still struggling for memorable hooks. I think what really lets this album down is that she doesn't have a strong enough voice, or at least she doesn't do enough with it.

I'm not going to claim the Jessy Lanza album from last year was perfect but I feel like it mined a similar territory to this and it has a bit of an edge over this.

xps sup

what the christ has even happened, if anything I agreed and said I was sorry

anyway, to get back to the original topic, the album itself is fine but I wouldn't go so far as to call it singular. I'm a bit stuck because the album/track this is reminding me of is very specific and I just can't think of the name for the life of me. Every name I've mentioned is sort of half-approaching the matter.

Nothing about this album's basic premise or core sonic territory are particularly original but I feel like its treatment of those sounds is pretty singular. Comparing this to Dawn Richard is a case in point - I mean it's closer to Armor On than Goldenheart-era Dawn, but even then the two don't share very much beyond R&B source material and a penchant for bleepy noises and dressing up as space warriors. Even when Dawn is doing intimate ballads she's still a dominant presence and all about the grand gesture ("you are my scripture"; "I broke down all the walls for you", countless bit of comic book or fantasy imagery) whereas Twigs uses these cavernous sonic spaces as backdrops to intense intimacy. And I think their production and (especially) the treatment of their vocals bears those differences out.

In general the album sounds like a lot of things (the Preface alone gives you Julia Holter choral voices, chopped and screwed walrus vocals, clanking industrial drums and rumbling dubstep bass) but it's the way it puts those elements together that gives it its singularity. It sounds like lots of other things but at the same time not much else sounds quite like it. "Singular" to me doesn't mean "completely unlike anything I've heard before".

I suppose another comparison point might be Luomo circa The Present Lover, where if you were just listening in the background for the first time you'd think that is sounded pretty much like any number of tasteful vocal house records, and then the further you get into it the more the various details begin to distinguish it. Although sonically this is kind of on point too, given both records' tendency towards hall-of-mirrors type production.

man, as someone who wrote this album off after finding all of the eps and singles really dull, I am REALLY digging this

idgi

i quite like this album in a non-committal way, can't hear what there is to be blown away by in it. sounds very lost-minor-90s-trip-hop-album to me. "two weeks" overshadows the rest of the album somewhat - it's the most r&b moment and i initially didn't like it because it sounded a bit like an art project version of ciara, but the abrupt switch-ups between vocal lines works so well. not much else sticks as much, unsure yet whether it's because the tunes aren't there or just not as immediate as "two weeks", unsure also if the arrangements interest me enough to really find out. i'm not especially keen on her all-build-no-release approach (vocally or structurally). i wish there was more choral stuff like "preface".

all the rhetoric around it is terrible. don't really hear much "futuristic" or "singular" in it (katherine otm on how it sounds like a ton of other things), and if i read one more male critic salivating over how no one else, ever, gets sex right like twigs does, ugh.

6/10 will probably use as background listening a couple more times this year

when i trust u we can retweet with the lights on when i trust u we can retweet with the lights on

...because really, what we need is more Cis *gay* men to tell us what female sexuality is supposed to look/sound like...

i am not telling you that. i'm saying fka twigs' presentation of power dynamics and intimacy in sexuality are things i've heard plenty of other female artists do, so all the rhetoric about how singular she is feels off to me. (and in a lot of reviews there's more than an overtone of Not Like The Other Girls) (which of course isn't her fault)

guys everyone can do sex in their own way

someone shd remix this album w a ton of sick drops tho

What do trans gay men think of fka twigs' portrayal of female sexuslity

what do asexual otherkin think of this snapchat of me flexing furiously

lol

I'm on the same page at stevie, surprised to be so into this, might go back and re-evaluate

love that this has turned into a contest concerning who can throw the most withering shade at some strawman's take on female sexuality. awesome. the music demands it.

the tunes aren't there

Most of my interest here is in the arrangements and textures and overall atmosphere, generally the songwriting feels insubstantial to me. I like the arrangements and textures so much though, but in general I feel that with more songs of the quality of Two Weeks it could have been astonishing.

this album is sexy as hell imo btw i'm str8

all the rhetoric about how singular she is feels off to me. (and in a lot of reviews there's more than an overtone of Not Like The Other Girls) (which of course isn't her fault)

― lex pretend, Monday, August 18, 2014 1:19 PM

This is the thing, Alex. That it seems like a lot of your (and others') negativity about this album is not actually about the album, but about the discourse *around* the album. For which she is not responsible, and it actually distracts attention from discussing the art to discussing How Men Write About Female Artists which is, y'know, there are a lot of discussions to be had about that but not another derail on another musician's thread. Because 1) it takes the focus off yet another artist's art and onto more fucking music journalists yet again and 2) you are not actually excepted from How Men Write About Female Artists!

I keep reading these criticisms that boil down to "but this sounds like {this other artist that does it better}". But when I go and listen to the few other artists that have been mentioned, sure, I can hear the influence of {future R&B / trip-hop / ethereal baebes goth} on FKA Twigs. Yes, she sounds vaguely like those genres. But then I go and listen to those artists, and they do not sound like twigs. Which makes me know that it's the combination which is appealing (I'm not using words like "singular" or "unique" or whatever because music doesn't have to be ~OMG totally unlike anything else~ to be appealing or good or anything, and the over-reliance on attraction to novelty and singularity as indicator of quality is something that usually spells "jaded pallet" to me.)

I don't have a huge exposure to music at the moment, almost entirely because of lack of cash and limited bandwidth (also, down to lack of cash) so I am facing limited options about what music to even *try out* at the moment. Maybe Twigs just struck a particular chord with the usual ILM-ers who are good predictors of stuff I'll like (DJP, MDC, Mel W) and people whose taste I trust. But that whole thing where people come in and tell me I shouldn't be listening to this thing I'm enjoying, I should be listening to {something which does not hit my buttons} - that gets to be a drag, where one feels like one have to defend my enjoyment of something, rather than just share my excitement. But, y'know, that's just part of ILM, along with {redacted, I'm not going to rise to that kind of tedious bullying any more}.

I wonder what setups people are using to listen to the album because after walking around with it playing through my ludicrously-expensive headphones, I have no idea how anyone can say it has no dynamics with a straight face.

#braggin

is this out for PONO yet?

xp: #notevensubtle

sick mouthy should be no one's role model when it comes to audiophiliac bragging

I'll cop to listening to this on expensive audiophiliac equipment too and DJP is otm

sick mouthy should be no one's role model when it comes to audiophiliac bragging

― lex pretend, Monday, August 18, 2014 3:13 PM (11 minutes ago)

oooooh sick burn wait what

Yeah, I have pretty amazing speakers, and that definitely contributed to my experience of the album.

(But, still, the first time I heard it, it was booming off echoey brutalist concrete, which was hardly an ideal listening circumstance, and I loved it then.)

It's definitely an album that benefits disproportionately from being listened to on speakers/headphones that really give you a sense of space.

Yeah I was listening on nice but not ridiculously expensive (grado) headphones and the pleasure this album brings seems v geared to that scenario.

see i just have $10 earbuds and this sounds totally sonically whitewashed to me. so maybe this really is just music for the landed gentry in which case 凸^-^凸

"only people with good audio equipment can really appreciate fkat" would be an excellent troll to foist on the internet at large

I dunno, I can hear the dynamics of LP1 on my shitty $20 Sony headphones.

People will spend 8 hours a day posting to ILM and spend $50 on 'brunch' but will still gawk at buying a nice pair of headphones ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Only if they're Beats headphones.

fuck Beats

My favourite genre. Fuck Beats.

I prefer fuck beats over nipplecore.

This album sounds great, and dynamics are stupid, who wants to listen to a record with their finger on the volume? not me

Not sure I would frame "dynamics" that way tbf

i listened to it on decent speakers and that's the thing, it sounded crystalline and quite lovely but in a kind of one-trick way?

the one album that kept springing to mind was björk's vespertine which i guess is a compliment, and tbh i love vespertine but it also has its share of songs that are a bit nothingy

won't someone hate this album on its own terms

i don't like the comparisons with records by singers (like dawn richard or whoever) because this feels like it's about (or inextricably tied to) the beats in a big way. like she's more interested in living inside the music than singing on top of it. which actually is pretty similar to Vespertine, although i find LP1 way hookier than that.

xps i haven't spent $50 on brunch in at least two weeks!

as far as sensual/floaty/ethereal R&B-not-R&B records, what i have heard of this so far (not had a chance to hear the whole album, just a few songs so i may change my mind), it made me think a lot of jessy lanza on hyperdub.

ah, just saw boxedjoy mentioned JL already...