I'm not really freaking out over her voice(it's a nice voice), but I didn't like her singing technique when I heard it. I'm not saying she should use technology to correct herself, but she should at least learn how to sing properly. Despite this, I liked everything I heard so far.

Album Rating: 4.0

hour logic was promising, will definitely check this

I like "Thaw" a lot.

I might get this.

makes me think of a more menacing, broken Amatorski

Album Rating: 4.0 | Sound Off

Glad this got a review, unique album.

at first glance the art reminded me of The Simpsons

can't wait to hear this one

Album Rating: 4.5

“I started out with a ton of echo and reverb on the vocals, but it sounded supremely boring to me, so I was curious how they’d sound dry in the arrangements and got rid of most of the wetness. It ended up creating this amazing contrast effect, the vocals slicing through the mix, giving rhythmic contour to the tracks that was previously missing in delay haze. It was tempting to use autotune but I decided against it because there’s this brutal, sensual ugliness in the vocals uncorrected, and painfully human vocals made sense for this record.” - Laurel Halo

I think I'm getting drunk of this album

Intentional or not... The vocals kills this listening experience for me. You can have "painfully human vocals" without sounding monotone and thus completely robotic (hahahaha painfully human vocals). Generally kind of annoying hooks, the programming is pretty decent though.

I don't think that any of the people who are complaining about the vocals are really paying attention to what she's doing. I think they're mistaking the lack of autotune as a cause of her "flat" delivery.

I think for her the auto-correction was enough, it wasn't flawed enough. She went for broken progressions and explore the inherently micro-tonal qualities of the voice in order to create true humanity and the "humanity" embedded in this album is posthumanist view (the merging of flesh and technology). The man/machine dichotomy doesn't actually exist when one realizes that technology as a whole is tied to our unconscious (as in we are passengers to our unconscious thus passengers to technology) playing off of our true desires and thoughts. Technology or the grand mask/mirror is us staring back at ourselves with a fuller sense of understanding that we, the original or physical self could never arrive to without it. The combining of technology and flesh is only us becoming well-versed in ourselves as an individual and as a society.

So with all that being said, she wanted her voice to be the voice of the everyman. She clearly displays in Light + Space that she has incredible vocal skills. She waited to construct "normal" chord progressions in that one to display the posthuman form in it's varied perfection (not an oxymoron).

Album Rating: 4.5

"She clearly displays in Light + Space that she has incredible vocal skills. She waited to construct "normal" chord progressions in that one to display the posthuman form in it's varied perfection (not an oxymoron)."



Nice observation. Although I think "Thaw" also has some elements of more "traditional" songcraft and, accordingly, a more traditional vocal style.

Well, for "Thaw" I felt as though she was fighting technology more, not to get overly interpretative. I mean that to say, he voice appeared to dodge the idea of form and grace by her singing in odd notes in the chord, and as most people would say her vocals were "deadpan" or "flat". That was the first time that she began to make a spectacle of her voice and humanity, so I see it as being the first step in that direction.

So essentially, I'm supposed to treat this as aural art rather than "but does it sound good?"

sigh

calm down, this sounds good

Album Rating: 3.5

So essentially, I'm supposed to treat this as aural art rather than "but does it sound good?"



sigh

THAT ARTWORK

this is a nice album

I can't say I understand why it isn't necessary to "go deeper". Isn't all music aural art by design? The organization of natural tones and rhythms into a linear structure is what all artist do, so if the tones are read in accordance with its inherent code (the things that are naturally associated with it) shouldn't all music be read on a deeper level? Even guitar bands like the Arctic Monkeys or The Strokes can and should be read on such a level considering that their sounds hark back to something of a sociological plane.

And specifically to listen to THIS album without that mindset is kind of defeating the purpose. She herself spoke of music advancing the unconscious mind into the physical (ie aural plane) as a means of creating a singular Other. Isn't that the natural basis of music criticism? To see how well the music that has been written ties the listener's/society's unconscious to the real?

I don't mean this to be confrontational, but I find the reading of Laurel's album especially on other sites to be disturbingly droll.

Album Rating: 3.0

This fails to leave any lasting impression except "that was interesting" and "cool artwork". Will probably give it a few more listens to be fair but this may become another background music album.