Unique, strong, and sexy—that’s how Beyoncé wants you to feel while listening to RENAISSANCE. Crafted during the grips of the pandemic, her seventh solo album is a celebration of freedom and a complete immersion into house and dance that serves as the perfect sound bed for themes of liberation, release, self-assuredness, and unfiltered confidence across its 16 tracks. RENAISSANCE is playful and energetic in a way that captures that Friday-night, just-got-paid, anything-can-happen feeling, underscored by reiterated appeals to unyoke yourself from the weight of others’ expectations and revel in the totality of who you are.
More than many, more-fêted stars, Jennifer Lopez seems emblematic of 00s pop: slick, blinged-up, powerful and ambitious enough to overcome such peasantish problems as a lack of innate aptitude for the form. And, for a while, her attitude worked to superb effect: she's the quintessential "more great songs than you initially assume" artist, with Love Don't Cost a Thing, Whatever You Wanna Do, If You Had My Love and – best of all – the Murder remixes of Ain't It Funny and I'm Real all high-water marks. But even her most passionate defenders couldn't have expected her to be relevant in 2011, with her most recent material seeming to indicate a decline of interest on both the public's part and her own…
Even before the first KuschelRock album, Kuschelrock was named as a weekly nightly music program for HR3 radio station (HR3 broadcasts from Frankfurt, Germany), the author and host of this project was Thomas Koschwitz, who is considered to be the co-author of a number of albums in Kazle … After Sony Music patented the right to release a series of albums called "KuschelRock", the HR3 radio station can no longer air this night music show … And now Sony Music regularly releases every year on the album …
A stunning second set from Hiatus Kaiyote – a group we already loved the first time around, but who really blow us away with this amazing little record! The style is this incredible mix of cosmic keyboards and soulful vocals – but not in a way that's like any of the other oft-tread paths in that combination on the market at all. Instead, the group almost put the keyboards first – working from some Herbie Hancock electric 70s mode, but very much with their own style – then find a key place for the sublime singing of Nai Palm – a vocalist who's got this style that's heavenly, and almost with her own sort of electricity as well. Individual tunes are great, but the whole thing really works together as one long sonic trip – a mindbending journey through tracks that include "Prince Minikid", "Shaolin Monk Motherfunk", "Laputa", "Borderline With My Atoms", "Swamp Thing", "Fingerprints", and "The Lung".