Sestri Levante 911 Posted June 7, 2019 Share Posted June 7, 2019 1 hour ago, Hades said: "Where the desire to dance does not dominate (as in the reinterpretation of the Brazilian hit 'Faz Gostoso' with Anitta), the tones are in fact often dark: as in 'Dark Ballet', a rhapsody of genres and styles ranging from Cajkovsky's pop to the Nutcracker'' Brazilian Hit Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hades 27,980 Posted June 7, 2019 Author Share Posted June 7, 2019 1 minute ago, Sestri Levante said: Brazilian Hit It's Portuguese right? I just copied the article. Their fault if they info is wrong. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sestri Levante 911 Posted June 7, 2019 Share Posted June 7, 2019 1 hour ago, Hades said: It's Portuguese right? I just copied the article. Their fault if they info is wrong. Yeah, they probably just assumed it when they saw and heard Anitta on the track Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavieX 330 Posted June 8, 2019 Share Posted June 8, 2019 Another 4 out of 5 strars  Madame X review â a splendidly bizarre return to form  âSolid confidence in her own aesthetic decisionsâ: Madonna. Photograph: Steven Klein Madonna is in her fourth decade of what we now somewhat suspiciously call appropriation, a pick-and-mix skill set that has previously laid the singer open to accusations of unoriginality or, worse, cultural hijacking. But when the patented Ciccone filtration system gets it right, the process is just shy of alchemy. Sexualised Catholicism, at the dawn of MTV, was Madonnaâs first stroke of kismet. The last time Madonna was indisputably on point, she had hooked up with French producer Mirwais for Music (2000)and the sensuous possibilities of club culture. Her latterday output has stuttered somewhat, but for Madame X the stars have aligned with Madonnaâs Pinterest mood board once again. There are hot climates and a piratical eye-patch; shape-shifting to the sounds of the Portuguese diaspora, trap-pop and reggeaton. It helps, of course, that she self-quotes as much as she soaks up. Is Latin pop in vogue? Donât mind if Madonna seizes upon it. MedellĂn, the first track from Madonnaâs 14th studio album, arrived like La Isla Bonita on steroids: with Madonna in a lather of faith and lust, exercising her long-held fascination with all things Latinate and in sync with a pop mood attuned to the other Americas. A further hook-up with Colombian star Maluma lurks further down this generous tracklisting: Bitch, Iâm Loca flirts with reggaeton and Maluma himself, who plays a delivery man instructed by Madonna to âput it insideâ. (Note the title: Bitch, Iâm Madonna, remixed; throughout the album, youâll find Madonna saying a âlittle prayerâ as she did on Like A Prayer (1989), or on her knees âlike a virginâ.) This is an album whose most memorable songs are definitely its strangest Colombia is a red herring, however. The songs that became Madame X actually came together during Madonnaâs two years in Portugal, where she decamped in 2017 when her son David enrolled in Benficaâs football academy. Madonna absorbed the local sounds with more of a mature, simpatico rather than asset-stripping eye. One lively Portuguese-diaspora tune, Faz Gostoso, makes a pitstop in Brazil, featuring Brazilian singer Anitta. Most âworldâ of all, however, are the sounds of batuque on a track called Batuka, a ceremonial good-time musï»żic of the Cabo Verde islands. Batuka finds Portugalâs Orquestra de Batukadeiras â women from Cabo Verde â helping out on a spiritual call-and-response track about overcoming adversity. Thereâs a cute video on their Facebook page of Madonna drumming. Add to this a Diplo reggae production, Future, on which Madonna plays at being Santigold, and the hot-climate half of this album adds up to considerably more than the sum of its parts: a polyglot party that feels spontaneous, an internationalism that feels earned, not tokenistic. Naturally, this Madonna album has to respond to other major trends in US pop. Her selection of guests has an eye onÂ ï»żhip-hop heat levels, rather than actual chemistry, calling on Quavo from Migos on Future, and Swae Lee from Rae Sremmurd on Crave. Their performances arenât quite as game as Malumaâs. To say that the former sounds like a track that might have been done by Ariana Grande isnât a negative, though: here, Madonna pulls off contemporary R&B-leaning pop with no obvious missteps. The meat of the album, however, lies elsewhere. Hidden away in the lyrics to Batuka are topical allusions: âGet that old man/ Put him in a jail.â Quite apart from the many Spanish and Portuguese passages, Madame X is littered with whispered, rapped or digitally cloaked lyrics. It is a political offering â the Eurovision palaver, where Madonna hamfistedly tried to engineer peace in the Middle East, was a foreshadowingï»żÂ â but one in which Madonnaâs meanings often perform a kind of seven-veil dance. Easiest to understand is Killers Who Are Partying, a 21st-century digital fado on which Madonna allies herself with the dispossessed and marginalised: virtue signalling, with trap beats on. Itâs sanctimonious, coming from a first-world millionaire, but she sings it like she believes it. Often, she obfuscates, but just intriguingly enough. A snippet of Florida school-shooting survivor Emma Gonzalezâs âWeï»żÂ call BSâ speech begins one song, I Rise. It follows, therefore, that a song called God Control is probably about gun control, as well as democracy and the state of the US. âThis is your wake-up call!â warns Madonna, before the whole thing is bathed in glitterball disco and topped off with a schoolyard sing-song rap about how Madonna doesnât take drugs. It sounds, weirdly, like Daft Punk. This is an album whose most memorable songs are definitely its strangest. Most ambitious of all perhaps is Dark Ballet, a long concept-song about Joan of Arc in which the lyricism of the piano lines startles. Madonna hersï»żelf is heavily Auto-tuned, mumbling stuff about being a witch; she seems to blow on the flames of a pyre. You get the feeling that Madonna identifies with the French martyr. She spends a lot of Madame X weighing up whether she is crazy, or lost, concluding quite the opposite. âI wasnât lost,â she sings on Extreme Occident, on the deluxe edition. Killers Who Are Partying bears many declarations, but perhaps the most relevant one is about Madonna herself. âI know what I am and I know what Iâm not,â she sings. Even more tellingly, I Donât Search, I Find puts a full stop on popstar neediness. âFinally, enough love,â she sings. The whole Madame X conceit â an international woman of mystery â dissipates quickly as this unexpectedly eï»żngrossing album goes on. Madame Xis certainly a fluid album, but one tempered by Madonnaâs solid confidence in her own aesthetic decisions. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jun/08/madonna-madame-x-review-splendidly-bizarre-return-to-form TRUMP 2020 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavieX 330 Posted June 8, 2019 Share Posted June 8, 2019 And another great review: Madameï»żÂ X hits you instantly with itsÂ ï»żvitality and variety, its omnivorousÂ ï»żhunger ï»żÂ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/event/article-7108089/Madame-X-Madonna-hits-instantly-vitality-variety-omnivorous-hunger.html  TRUMP 2020 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
simbiosis 411 Posted June 8, 2019 Share Posted June 8, 2019 All this acclaim is incredible!  Since the start of this era, I got the feeling that that this would be another career defining album, and I wasn't wrong! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hades 27,980 Posted June 8, 2019 Author Share Posted June 8, 2019 80+ seems realistic if those high scores keep coming. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavieX 330 Posted June 9, 2019 Share Posted June 9, 2019 1 hour ago, Hades said: 80+ seems realistic if those high scores keep coming. Oh Pitchfork are going to be soo negative like always althought they gave "medellin" a good review.  They distroyed ARTPOP when i came out. TRUMP 2020 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hades 27,980 Posted June 10, 2019 Author Share Posted June 10, 2019 Updated the op. Score is up to 79/100. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavieX 330 Posted June 10, 2019 Share Posted June 10, 2019 On 6/5/2019 at 4:29 PM, metalguru said: Madonna's albums are always getting good reviews... Even Rebel Heart pulled some very good ones... Why? Because all these journalist are 40 something Maddy fans. WOW  the ignorance, the agesim, the fumes TRUMP 2020 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hades 27,980 Posted June 12, 2019 Author Share Posted June 12, 2019                                            SLANT MAG                                             4/5 STARS The album is the work of an artist reawakened, and one whoâs got something to say ''Madame X plays like a musical memoir, sometimes literally: âI came from the Midwest/Then I went to the Far East/I tried to discover my own identity,â Madonna sings on the Eastern-inflected âExtreme Occident,â referencing her rise to fame and spiritual awakening, famously documented on her 1998 album Ray of Light. A multi-part suite that shifts abruptly from electro-pop dirge to classical ballet and back again, âDark Balletâ is a Kafkaesque treatise on faith and her lifelong crusade against the patriarchal forces of religion, gender, and celebrityâan existential battle echoed in the Jean-Paul Sartre-quoting closing track âI Rise.â The albumâs autobiography is also conveyed sonically: Itâs a thrill to hear Madonna singing over a â90s house beat on the smoldering âI Donât Search I Find.â But despite its ballroom strings, finger-snaps, and throaty spoken-word bridge, comparing it to âVogueâ or âEroticaâ would be too easy. This isnât a song so much as a mood. Itâs downstairs music, the distant bassline rumbling beneath your feet as you slip into a bathroom stall for a quick bump or ****. Madonna has a reputation for being a trendsetter, but her true talent lies in bending those trends to her will, twisting them around until theyâre barely recognizable, and creating something entirely new. The albumâs piĂšce de rĂ©sistance, at least in that regard, is the six-minute âGod Control,â which begins with Madonna conjuring the spirit and disaffected monotone of Kurt CobainââI think I understand why people get a gun/I think I understand why we all give up,â she sings through clenched teethâbefore the whole thing implodes into a euphoric, densely layered samba-disco-gospel mash-up. Throughout the song, Madonnaâs vocals alternate between Auto-Tuned belting, urgent whispers, and Tom Tom Club-style rapping as she takes on the gaslight industrial complex and so-called political reformers. On paper, it might sound like the ingredients for a musical Hindenburg, butâsomewhere around the midpoint, when she declares, âItâs a con, itâs a hustle, itâs a weird kind of energy!ââit all coheres into the most exhilaratingly batshit thing sheâs done in years'' READ MORE HERE: https://www.slantmagazine.com/music/review-madonna-madame-x-is-a-fearless-eccentric-musical-memoir/ Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LouiseVeronica 426 Posted June 12, 2019 Share Posted June 12, 2019 Holy **** at the Slant review!!! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andreu 37,216 Posted June 12, 2019 Share Posted June 12, 2019 Why should we believe a newspaper that says Dark Ballet has dubstep in it Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hades 27,980 Posted June 12, 2019 Author Share Posted June 12, 2019 Only 2 mixed reviews so far. The rest are positive although Pitchfork won't be a soft reviewer. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chromatislaps 34,558 Posted June 12, 2019 Share Posted June 12, 2019 I'm kind of obsessed with Dark Ballet. Â I can't wait for the full album Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Featured Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.