D'Angelo - Black Messiah (2014)

The mbv record largely went in one ear and out the other for me, though I've never been a My Bloody Valentine disciple. I'm not historically a D'Angelo disciple either, but something about the timing of this record and the sound of it and not having any real expectations and then getting blown away makes Black Messiah SO much more important to me than mbv was.

i like MBV more than loveless, though thats prob cos i wasnt into loveless when it came out. i WAS very into voodoo when it came out (though badu's mamas gun is STILL the better album of the two), but i still think this new one is actually an improvement in several ways.

I'm already to declare this better than MBV, and I say this as a) someone who's a big MBV fan and loved that album, and b) someone who is new to D'Angelo. (When he was initially popular I wasn't into his style of music.)

i dunno if i can go that far, though i am digging this & still kinda figuring it out. Voodoo feels infintely more subtle and like, deft, or something—not inherently superior but a more interesting approach to me—here's there's definitely a letting the accidental contrasts happen of live musicianship going on, a less precise approach

i keep wondering if the fact prince released some new albums this year made dangelo finally give this thing in.

bilal's recent work is nowhere near this daring or expansive... and i LIKE bilal

I dunno, Prince has never really stopped releasing albums. Just for some reason people were paying attention to Prince this year.

xp Black Messiah probably more painstakingly crafted but i don't see how its that much more daring or expansive than "A Love Surreal"

skipped the part where people started talking about MBV but this isn't better than voodoo lol

viny's on sale now btw https://twitter.com/TheDangelo/status/544638668347281408

ah shit

well I wasn't gonna wait til February

given the emphasis on live musicianship it's crazy this album doesn't sound more conservative, the production and arrangements are super dense and detailed

Had a fair bit of time to tinker

well yeah

so happy the vinyl is not $45 like the new MBV

airtights revenge has some pretty unusual touches and interesting chords throughout, more than a love surreal actually.

True. My brain thinks Airtights Revenge is a lot older than it actually is for some reason.

love surreal feels WAY less weird to me than black messiah
bilal feels less funky than d to me these days as well
i like LS a great deal tho'

like bilal is more on the sananda matreiya tip; proggier

Proggier is definitely otm. Also I guess a lot of what makes A Love Surreal scan as weird to me is in how he uses his voice. Less tight and controlled than usual, almost eerie and haunting at times.

that's otm. i think of bilal as the spirit of jazz haunting r&b

Lol at the Grantland "I wish this were an imaginary shitty album instead of a good album that actually exists"

isnt he just saying he wished he'd gone for a diff paradigm instead of competing w/ his older work idk makes sense to me

i wish the d'angelo album wasnt a d'angelo album etc

kid d'a

voodoo is much better. but this is still super nice

I actually thought of Kid A while listening to this for the first time, with "1000 Deaths"/"Really Love" and "National Anthem"/"How to Disappear" as first-half tonal disparity twins

not even d'angelo can escape without a radiohead reference :(

sorry :(

well someone invoked Pomplamoose upthread so it can only get better, surely

I've always liked Voodoo, but some people itt obviously LOVE it to a degree I've never managed to reach. For me, Black Messiah pushes some buttons that Voodoo doesn't (noisier production, more devil in the details, etc). I can't fault someone who's loved Voodoo for the last 15 years for saying this isn't quite as good, but it's continuing to kick my ass all over the place.

1,000 Deaths sounds SO much better on my stereo at home. I was listening to it mostly in my car today which has a pretty shitty sound system and all I could hear was distorted bass, it just sounded like soup

so much better at home!

Loving the hell out of "Back to the Future Part 1"

― Tim F, Monday, December 15, 2014 5:14 PM (5 hours ago)

this song is so killer

voodoo is one of my favorite albums of all time and uh idk if i'm ready to suggest black messiah is better or worse than it

for the most part imo it does different things

Agree with every word of Johnny and Brad's posts above. For me distinguishing itself from Voodoo was the biggest prerequisite for this album's success, and it more than accomplishes that. (Also helps that this album differentiates itself in all the right ways imo; everything I loved about Voodoo is represented here, along with a crapload of surprises and innovations)

Voodoo > Black Messiah > Brown Sugar imo

The album has been out 24 hours!

Something about the guitar in "Betray My Heart" reminds me of Isolee "Beau Mot Plage."

i have a kind of dumb poorly-formed thought that I can't really shake -- 'Sugah Daddy' sounds like the blended style that Outkast were going for with the music in Idlewild. Which would have been a hundred times better if it sounded like this imo.

this sounds so much better on CD (and i have pretty good ipod headphones).

i can't really judge how this sounds until i've blasted it in a car with three high friends heading out into the pennsylvania wilderness

another life might be the best thing hes ever done. not sure why it wasnt on the rip i downloaded....

god, this album...

"1000 Deaths" is the one that's taken my breath away

heh

http://www.vulture.com/2014/12/everyone-freaked-out-about-dangelo-black-messiah.html

one thing voodoo has over this record is the slow inexorable build toward "untitled"

in this way black messiah does function more like a sly album, a bunch of exercises that together knit an unsettled atmosphere

any reports on the how the vinyl pressing sounds?

vinyl's not out till Feb, is it?

I want it though

ah ok, i thought i read someone say they'd saw vinyl up thread....