MAGDALENE

This album has been added to 4 public lists:

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  FKA twigs

  Artemis

  This record sounds to me like it is heavily influenced by R&B, but also church choir and acapella singing. This comes to no one’s surprise when the album is called Magdalene and bases its theme on Mary Magdalene’s persona as depicted in the Bible. Twigs incorporates these Renaissance choirs with electronic instrumentation in a way that is truly innovative and reminiscent of Arca’s production of Utopia by Björk.

  I thought I was reaching, but if the Wikipedia page says that her experimentation is reminiscent of Björk and Kate Bush, then it has to be. That’s what I’m hearing myself. I was so sure Arca must’ve contributed to the project directly, but apparently only indirectly at the very least. She became more widely known with the release of Björk’s Utopia in 2017 where she was featured on almost every track so she must’ve influenced FKA twigs.

  […] Magdalene, then, is a fucking revelation. FKA twigs’ first album in four years, and her best work by far, is as introspective as anything she’s written, but more obviously centers her voice as a conduit for plain emotion. Written during a publicly scrutinized relationship with a famously reluctant vampire, as well as a more private recovery from the removal of fibroids from her uterus, she has said she found solace and inspiration in the story of Mary Magdalene, among the New Testament’s most reviled and misunderstood character, whose complexities were rewritten by centuries of chauvinist churchmen into a fallen-woman side note in Jesus’ story. By locating herself in Magdalene’s lineage, twigs, a Catholic school alumnus, explores the ways deeply conservative expectations trammel women; in doing so, she locates a version of herself within these ancient and oppressive archetypes, upending and transcending them through the power of her songwriting and the sheer magnetic pull of her presence. — Pitchfork, 2019

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  vinyl dreams

  Chase

  gives lorde melodrama vibes

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