kilocycles per second presents...
The Weeknd - House of Balloons
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■▄▄█▓▒░ RELEASE INFO
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ARTiST The Weeknd
TiTLE House of Balloons
GENRE Electronic
SUBGENRE Pop / R&B / Swing
LABEL Not On Label
CAT.NR None
YEAR 2012
SOURCE FREEWEB
ENCODER FhG
QUALiTY 320kbps
SiZE 113,5 MB
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■▄▄█▓▒░ TRACKS
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01 The Weeknd - High For This 04:08
02 The Weeknd - What You Need 03:26
03 The Weeknd - House Of Balloons / Glass 06:47
Table Girls
04 The Weeknd - The Morning 05:13
05 The Weeknd - Wicked Games 05:25
06 The Weeknd - The Party & The After Party 07:39
07 The Weeknd - Coming Down 04:55
08 The Weeknd - Loft Music 06:02
09 The Weeknd - The Knowing 05:56
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Total: 49:31 min
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■▄▄█▓▒░ NOTES
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The Weeknd is 21-year-old Toronto resident Abel Tesfaye.
House of Balloons is his debut album, distributed freely
online, and it's quite unlike any other RnB collection
to have emerged in 2011. Thanks to a Twitter leg-up from
fellow Toronto artist Drake, Tesfaye has seen his
underground tracks edge towards the mainstream, and
earlier this month House of Balloons made the shortlist
for the Polaris Prize, Canada's equivalent of the
Mercury. Come 19 September Tesfaye could be both $30,000
better off - that's the prize money on offer - and in a
position to genuinely vie for album-of-2011 top spots.
The foundation stones have certainly been laid. At the
end of June, House of Balloons featured on numerous
best-of-2011-so-far lists - number nine at Stereogum,
number one at Complex; a spot on Spin's (unranked) list
of the best 25 - and was the highest-rated album of the
period according to Metacritic, ahead of PJ Harvey and
Bon Iver. The stage is set, then, for this to really
impress come December's shuffle of the past-12-months
pack. Only, Tesfaye isn't limiting himself to just this
release - due in the summer and autumn respectively are
Thursday and Echoes of Silence, wholly new collections.
It's entirely feasible, based on the quality of House of
Balloons, that this single artist could have three
entries in the upper reaches of many top albums lists.
And, should said brace match this recording's mix of
bruised confessionals and heart-squeezed yearning, set
to elegant production and some choice sampling (Tesfaye
lifts from Beach House, twice, and Siouxsie and the
Banshees for his fantastic title-track), such domination
will be deserved. From the opener onwards, House of
Balloons impresses immensely with its compositional
restraint - imagine The xx if they'd further pursued
their natural RnB leanings - and Tesfaye's acrobatic
vocals. He overstretches himself on occasions, but never
to such an extent that songs don't linger long after
they've faded to a resigned silence. High for This finds
our protagonist promising that a relationship is built
to last - but there's doubt in his voice. This
uncertainty and open vulnerability runs the set's
length, even when he's claiming "he's what you want,
(but) I'm what you need" on the very next cut. Later,
he's torn to shreds on Wicked Games: "I need confidence
in myself," he says, before desperately pleading for a
partner to tell him she loves him, "Only for tonightà
even though you don't love me". Come Loft Music he can't
stand to look ahead - "I'm living for the present, and
the future don't exist" - and like the similarly aged
Tyler, the Creator, whose controversial-in-some-corners
raps are merely a means of escape from what have become
everyday pressures, he's caught in a moment that might
be too much for one so young.
This lyrical tone isn't so far away from Drake's short-
on-stereotypical-braggadocio Thank Me Later - one of the
best albums of 2010 - and in a production sense House of
Balloons recalls both The-Dream, albeit stripped of his
swagger, and Frank Ocean, whose freely distributed
nostalgia, ULTRA release of February 2011 will soon be
repackaged in the UK via Mercury. Ocean, an Odd Future
affiliate, was among the contributors to BeyoncΘ's
recently released album 4 and has worked with Kanye West
and Jay-Z, and both Drake and The-Dream are megastars in
their field. There's every chance that Tesfaye will
follow them into superstardom, and he exhibits enough
originality, sparkle and soul across these nine tracks
to suggest he could one day surpass their successes -
perhaps sometime around December. (bbc.co.uk)
URL: http://the-weeknd.com/
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■▄▄█▓▒░ ABOUT
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