tue 10/12/2024

CD: Kygo - Cloud Nine | reviews, news & interviews

CD: Kygo - Cloud Nine

CD: Kygo - Cloud Nine

Dance music becomes ever more feeble in the hands of the misguided

Still wet

The Norwegian DJ-producer Kyrre Gørvell-Dahll – AKA Kygo – rose to prominence a couple of years ago on the back of “tropical house”, a club sub-genre that, at its best, meant hazy, Balearic and/or indie-dance grooves, but on Kygo’s watch became saccharine Costa del Crap EDM-house with his synth software permanently set to some simple-minded, nursery rhyme melodic arrangement only toddlers should find euphoric.

Confronted by the debut album from this permanently baseball-capped, baby-faced, 24-year-old dance-pop star, I honestly started to feel a little nauseous. It's the sonic equivalent of slowly swallowing a bubble-bath of sugar-water and Disney Princess vomit, a 15 song eternity flavoured with the fake effervescence of Hollywood’s most cringe-inducing rom-com happy endings.

The album is peppered with contemporary chart-busting and wannabe-chart-busting vocalists – Tom Odell, Kodaline, John Legend, Foxes, Labrinth, James Vincent McMorrow, Matt Corby, etc – who go in for various degrees of producer-treated, X Factor-style attempts at emotion. Even the ones who succeed in offering a semblance of character – Will Heard and Angus & Julia Stone – are soon subsumed by Kygo’s infantile rictus-grin bounce. His breakthrough hit “Firestone”, featuring Australian singer Conrad Sewell, sums things up, with its keyboard interludes redolent of those panpipe players you find in suburban town centres, but with the jauntiness turned up to psych-ward manic.

These Satanically cheery fall-back chord sequences, which occur in most of Kygo's songs, deserve further analysis. Why are they so deeply unpleasant? “Firestone”, for instance, is in G major, a common key in pop. The only vaguely unusual thing is the use of an A major chord instead of A minor. Yet an African or Caribbean band could likely base music around this and create something funky and joyful. Which indicates Cloud Nine’s awfulness simply comes down to the sheer, lowest common denominator banality of Kygo’s ideal of dance music. He – and too many others – appear to think dance music is a squeaky-clean primary school disco with balloons and sugar-saturated carbonated drinks, only with the tedious addition of adult gym bodies and endless selfies. It defies belief that things have come to this. In short, we didn’t fight the rave wars for this beige nobody, and his many homogenous, clean-cut soundalikes, to turn dance music into a lake of diabetic piss.

Comments

Clearly you have never been to a live Kygo performance to feel the energy of the connection that he has on people.  Stop being a hater and try and enjoy life because his music makes people feel good.  What wrong with feeling good? Ask yourself! 

 

This is the most unprofessional load of crap I have ever read about Kygo. I myself am a huge fan of his music which I view as very different from mainstream pop as he is slowly influencing mainstream pop. Your ignorance to Kygo and his fans disgusts me not to mention your profound distaste in a beautifully new and different sub genre of house is revolting. Your overbearing descriptions of Kygo's signature sound disturbs me. You are not listening to his music, you are only hearing it. Also are you going through a serious clinical depression because I don't know anyone who finds disgust in an artist that makes music to make their fans happy. In conclusion I feel sorry for you, you obviously have some pshycological issues that need to be worked out and your probably some 50 year old guy that still listens to Fleetwood Mac and Bruce Springsteen in his basement through a 30 year old walkman and you also give negative reviews to new talent in your free time. This review should be taken down for the unreal amount of bs.

"probably some 50 year old guy that still listens to Fleetwood Mac and Bruce Springsteen in his basement through a 30 year old walkman"

Probably the furthest from the truth you could ever be about the reveiwer. Bands / artists get bad reviews, get over it. 

oh come on.. He's not that far off the truth. I work at the NME & we have a picture of Kygo by the dustbin that the office girls throw screws up paper at

Your are straight up trash. Throw some paper at artists that are actually trash like the ones that go through your damned website. 

This guy probably just discovered Kygo yesterday when his boss told him to write about this and skimmed through the previews of his songs to write this garbage review. Seriously, you have no taste in music man.

'a lake of diabetic piss' - Haha, spot on. Ive just listened to some of this crap. What a load of audio sedative nonsense - there's no hope for humanity if this is what the kids are listening to. The human race will turn into a hord of happilly controlled zombies.. Not long now. 

Are you being sarcastic? 

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