Bladee, Mechatok - Good Luck (Review)
10th December 2020
YEAR0001
My Rating:
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5.4
/10
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REVIEW
With his latest collaborative effort, Bladee's music is taken out of the ethereal direction he's been pursuing and into a stiff electropop direction, to mixed results.
His third release in 2020, Good Luck follows from his ambitious album 333, an impressive leap forward that appeared to indicate a further exploration of the dreamy, ambient pop influence that shaped much of that record, and the creativity that came in shaping such a diverse tracklist, songs moving between acoustic ballads and his usual cloud trap seamlessly, almost entirely due to the cohesion of the atmosphere, provided by the great synthwork.
If there's one thing that translated over to this new album, it's that same sense of cohesion, the tracklist flowing well between songs and the general atmosphere retained, producer Mechatok diverting the course of Bladee's ambient ascension to more accessible electropop, occasionally bordering on the hyperpop sounds of earlier SOPHIE singles, but never reaching the same peaks or level of brazen noise or experimentation that characterises the sound, instead leaving the album in a kind of purgatory between more mainstream electropop and the more extreme regions that hyperpop occupies. In this way, the album lacks both Bladee's usual experimentation, as well as Mechatok's pop deconstructions, resulting in an album that feels far less futuristic than it should, grounded by the sounds of the last decade and not moving forward as the two usually do.
I do think the song "Rainbow" stands out from the rest of the tracklist, though not for escaping the purgatory this album is trapped in, instead finding a way to excel within that space, operating as one of the more danceable tracks and also boasting the album's best chorus, the lyrics taking a none too original stance with a "forget the world, have fun" theme, executed pretty well. The track "Into One" gets close to a obtaining the same level of quality, but its limited by some unflattering synths occupying, somewhat undermining the track's predominantly more aggressive instrumental. Other than that, the tracklist goes back without leaving much of an impact, the extremely brief runtime (20 minutes) making for a fun, easy listen, but not a particularly compelling one. I'm hoping this was a one off for Bladee, and that they return to the ethereal sound they've just begun pursuing, and thankfully I'm optimistic that he will.
BREAKDOWN
Ambition: 4
Atmosphere: 7
Catchiness/Enjoyability: 7
Content/Ideas: 5
Emotion/Engaging: 4
Execution: 6
Production: 7
Structure: 6
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Lyrics: 4
Vocals/Flows: 4
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Total: 54
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