level 13
有ZEDD在幕后工作,就算是 Tom Waits(一个民谣爵士类歌手)也能做出一首让人感觉良好的夏日热单:那些这个25岁的德国制作人经手的,从他自己的大热单曲Clarity到小牛牛的Break Free,现在变成了candy rave gold(应该是个稍含贬义的词,我也不知道具体指的什么)。
TC,ZEDD的第二张专辑,包含了关于爱情,关于分手,关于及时行乐的歌,但是真正的主题是庞大的节拍。开场曲Addicted to a Memory有工业噪音风格,然后引入了nuclear-meltdown (字面意思是核电站出事故之类的现象,估计不是什么积极的词)的空灵女声和激进的键盘乐。Straight Into the Fire,最精彩的部分,用合成器琶音给了你一个下马威,在被像用彩色纸屑覆盖的hook击中,爆炸在狂喜中之前。
这样的点石成金指是有代价的,就算他在一个主流的音乐厂牌之下,拥有符合这个地位的录音和vocal,ZEDD的颜色还是经常难以区分(也许是指太过密集而且模糊),在8首歌之后,他用papercut这首歌来过度补偿(这种),这首用了钢琴间奏长达7分半的歌却过于成人抒情而且缺乏力度了。而事实上成功做到的是Bumble Bee,这首歌像是一个经历了一次糟糕的分手后酗酒的醉汉,这首歌的能量表明Cindy Lauper(一个歌手,也有一张专辑叫TRUE COLORS)并不在这张专辑里面,ZEDD只是想开心地玩一场而已。
2015年05月25日 01点05分
3
level 13
Pitchfork 4.2/10
In 2013, Anton Zaslavski—who records as Zedd—went from "Who the fuck is Zedd?" to a household name thanks to two ubiquitous singles. First was "Clarity", the aural equivalent of standing under a fake waterfall at Tomorrowland, and the brain-invading Hayley Williams feature "Stay the Night". This was skyscraping stuff, and it’s a sound that the 25-year-old producer had made his name on behind the boards for artists like Lady Gaga (Zedd contributed three songs to Artpop) and Justin Bieber (Believe’s surging "Beauty and a Beat"). In 2015, Zedd is not only one of the richest men in the biz, he’s a tabloid star.
Given the higher profile, it was probably no surprise that the rumored Selena Gomez collaboration bore fruit in the form of "I Want You to Know", the first, Ryan Tedder-co-written single from Zedd’s new album True Colors. For better or for worse, "I Want You to Know" is a good entry point for True Colors, a collection of songs that features Zedd consistently failing to open up the playbook or alter the formula. Many songs—opener "Addicted to a Memory", "Straight into the Fire"—feature familiar pop constructions. Not unlike his hits (including his Ariana Grande collaboration "Break Free"), Zedd routinely uses soaring synth stabs with crystal clear vocals from female singers. While it’s worked in the past, it feels like the primary colors Zedd tends to paint with feel faded.
Though Zedd keeps his foot on the pedal, it comes with the cost of diminishing returns. Even changes of pace like "Beautiful Now"—male singer!—feel flat and corny ("Let’s live tonight/ Like fireflies!"). If you want vague, positive platitudes bouncing off every pocket of pixelated pomp, True Colors is a one-stop shop. Take "Transmission", a song that limply thumps around the chorus "Cause you're never too young, you're never too young, never too young to die" and features a verse from Maryland rapper Logic that makes Kalin and Myles sound likeUGK.
It’s tempting to paint Zedd as a singles artist, and True Colors reveals that the DJ doesn’t have much to say at an album’s length. True Colors does traverse familiar, populous formats that may be difficult to innovate on top of, but other posi-tinted, mass audience-focusedprojects have found success by mixing their own cocktails of EDM, soul, and of-the-minute rap production. Zedd’s True Colors, though, feels underformed and unoriginal. Basically,swipe left.
2015年05月25日 01点05分
4
level 13
在2013年, Anton Zaslavski(也就是ZEDD)没一个无名小辈变成了家喻户晓的名字,这得归功于两首无处不在的热单,第一首是Clarity,给人的听觉体验就像站在TOMORROWLAND的人造瀑布下,和大脑侵入一样的由海狸feat的Stay the Night。这是了不起的成就,而且这也证明了ZEDD确实有足够的能力给LADY GAGA和JUSTIN BIEBER做幕后制作人。到了2015年,ZEDD不仅是商业杂志上最富有的人之一,他还是个通俗小报上常见的明星。
由于较高的知名度,这不是很奇怪他能和Selena Gomez传出合作的传言而且产出了I WANT YOU TO KNOW这样的成果,由RYAN TEDDER合作写出的TRUE COLORS首单,不管是好是坏,这首歌都是一个好的专辑的切入点,另外一系列的歌都失败于不停的参考攻略书或者公式表,"Addicted to a Memory", "Straight into the Fire”,拥有一致的女性pop的固定结构,不像BREAK FREE(注:这家乐评给了break free相当高的评价),ZEDD按部就班的用那些常用的合成器,干净通透的女声,虽然这在以前是行得通的,但是这让人感觉ZEDD首先要描绘的颜色已经变得暗淡了。
即时看得出来ZEDD还在努力,但是收效不大,就算像是在Beautiful now中的改变(男vocal!(这其实是挖苦)),平庸而且老掉牙。如果你喜欢这种模模糊糊的感觉,TRUE COLORS就像是一个像素化的盛典,充满了心灵鸡汤一样的陈词滥调。比如Transmission,一首在副歌“never too young never too young to die”中无力地跳动,而且feat的rapper Logic让 Kalin and Myles 听起来像UGK.
因此ZEDD倾向于一个只适合做单曲的DJ,但是TRUE COLORS显示这个DJ并没有多少想说的内容撑起一张专辑的长度,True Colors用了大量我们已经熟悉的模式来制作因此创新性不足,但是其他的一些同样面向大批听众的又有自己风格的EDM尝试(举了PORTER ROBINSON的例子)已经取得了成功。ZEDD的这张专辑,感觉没有创新,简而言之,向左划(讽刺ZEDD在TINDER上打的广告,TINDER上遇到不中意的人就向左划消去。)
2015年05月25日 02点05分
5
level 13
Spin的,6/10
Blame it on the self-perpetuating myth of the “sophomore slump,” but massively successful artists have more to lose on their second effort than their debut. In the case of Russian-German DJ/producer Zedd (born Anton Zaslavski), however, the opposite seems to be true. Speaking to SPIN earlier this month about True Colors(the dense, orchestral follow-up to 2012’s Clarity), he emphasized the risky intention of the album’s notably drop-free, spaghetti Western-themed title track. “It was really important for me to make a statement with that song for people that don’t know about my past in classical music and rock music and acoustic instrumentation,” he said. “I was afraid of putting a song like this on my album before.”
Zedd’s musicianship has always been apparent in how easily his tracks can be stripped down; most notably, his piano-driven performance of “Clarity” onLetterman and his acoustic iTunes Sessions EP (pedal steel!). But “True Colors” is the first track of his that could pass for a “proper song” as it originally appears on his album. Besides lyrics like “I’m not afraid” and “I’ll show you my true colors,” the track’s roiling drums and church bells sound off as almost a challenge — perhaps to naysayers of EDM as a legitimate form of music, whom he’s addressed before. In a recent interview with The Guardian, and a tweet around the time of Clarity’s release, he emphasized focusing on the “M” in EDM.
Like his mentor Skrillex, Zaslavski has residual rock chops: He started out as a drummer in melodic metalheads Dioramic before taking on his more familiar namesake, and that backstory plays much more of a defining role on True Colors than Clarity, which was built around the traditional big-tent bangers’ dropstep-topline breakdown. Though Zedd hinted at his nearly two decades of playing the piano in the Daft Punk-reminiscent keyboard noodling on tracks like “Stache,” those moments always took a backseat to his turbo-charged bass hits.
On his new LP, he foregrounds them, as on opening track “Addicted to a Memory.” The slow-building piece features the rising all-female folk outfit Bahari, layering them over an acoustic guitar and gentle swishes to grinding complextro breaks and a manic arpeggio like the soundtrack to Treasure Mountain. Though borderline whiplash-inducing, it spotlights Zedd’s abilities more than what follows: his catchy but color-by-numbers Selena Gomez feature, “I Want You to Know.”
While it’s admirable that Zedd is making an active effort to avoid tried-and-true formulas of other, older superstars like Calvin Harris and David Guetta, sometimes it sounds like he can’t see the audience for the crowds. True Colorszigzags between the piano-led reckoning that is “Papercut” (featuring YouTube star Troye Sivan), chest-beating thumper “Bumblebee” (with Botnek), and the anthemic violin arrangements of “Daisy.” Though each song is single-minded in its pursuit of musicality — something Zaslavski reveled in without previous distractions, like recording with Lady Gaga while he was making Clarity — the album as a whole lacks any direction other than the ambition to be more than it winds up being.
He might look to peers like Madeon and Porter Robinson, whom Zaslavski toldSPIN were his like-minded compatriots when they were first starting out. But while those two are less adventurous than Zedd, each has crafted a cohesive debut LP, a decisively non-jarring listening experience. They transport the listener completely to a different world (or Worlds, in Robinson’s case) even if some of the songs become filler in the process. On True Colors, each track tries to be a separate statement as Zedd tries to crash through his own, pre-existing glass ceiling — but the whole falls short of the sum of its parts.
2015年05月25日 02点05分
6
level 12
Zedd的钢琴功底都快20年了,为什么还要做个电子制作人呢。?。
2015年05月25日 04点05分
9
赚钱 练钢琴20多年的多了 能红的有几个?zedd再不济一年也收入上千万美元
2015年05月25日 06点05分
回复
@Vinyle :我怕电子制作只是zedd认为收入最快的,可能 house不是他最喜欢的,当然,也排除这个可能。
2015年05月25日 09点05分
level 9
乐评还算可以,用户评分真的不能接受.....求一下Clarity的评分
2015年05月30日 16点05分
12
level 10
其实骚姆的寂寞一小时和黄老板的X也都是50多....
不算很低啦...
滚石给的也不低...要知道RED当年好像也是3星? 还是三星半?
2015年06月06日 12点06分
14