LP1
FKA twigs’ first full-length album brims with spartan, icy songs that whisk between distorted R&B and ethereal pop. While twigs’ pristine vocals and sensual lyrics are the cornerstone, *LP1* showcases the kind of confident production and instrumentation that play easily alongside celebrated pop minimalists like James Blake. Album highlight “Pendulum\" sees FKA twigs dabbling in manipulated vocals, as wavering guitars and electric drums stutter-step intoxicatingly, while “Video Girl” finds her melodic falsetto fluttering over churning, wobbling synths and creaking percussion.
FKA twigs' first full-length is a monumental debut. On a formal level, it takes the kinds of risks that few pop artists, and few "experimental" artists, for that matter, are willing to take these days. As far as the making of the artist known as FKA twigs goes, it brings her tantalizingly into focus without shedding any of the mystique she has developed so far.
Tahliah Barnett, better known as FKA Twigs, certainly has the pedigree of someone who makes woozy R&B. She’s called Gloucestershire and London home, has familial roots in Jamaica and Spain, and has been an artistic force in dance and vocals from an early age. Now 26 years old, she’s released her first full-length, and…
The brittle Gloucestershire R&B crooner swans through silence, samples and ambiguity on her eagerly-anticipated debut.
Since FKA twigs slipped into culture behind a mutated face, disembodied and spinning nervously in the surreal video for…
FKA Twigs' early EPs were such jewel-like statements of purpose, delivering songs full of sensuality and heartache so economically, that an album almost seemed superfluous.
LP1. Love that. Dismissive of the po-faced, bow-down-before-me hubris displayed by most féted progeny, Tahliah Barnett opts for low key and ego-free. As statements of intent go, here’s an album title all about the future. But it begins in the past, album opener Preface lifting directly from 16th century poet Thomas Wyatt’s I Find No Peace (“I love another and thus I hate myself.”) From there on in, it transforms into an impeccably crafted melange of chill electro and skeletal R'n'B.
Much like her penchant for cracking her limbs, FKA twigs' brand of experimental R&B on her debut, LP1, is wholly devoted to staccato snaps and tonal fractures, tempered only by the soft balm of her voice.
If it weren't for the very self-explanatory name LP1, you'd be forgiven for not believing it was British singer/producer FKA twigs' debut album. Rarely does a young artist make such an assured and confident statement with their first full-length album, an
FKA Twigs's hotly anticipated debut is a compelling masterclass in millennial sex-angst, writes <strong>Kitty Empire</strong>
LP1 is 40 minutes of sex and touching, and it intertwines repulsion with attraction to the point that the two are indistinct.
FKA Twigs' new album LP1 reviewed by Northern Transmissions, the LP comes out on August 9th via Young Turks, the first single from the LP IS "Water Me"
<p><strong>Alexis Petridis</strong>: Another supposedly mysterious pop star turns out to be a pretty normal human being – but with songs this good, who cares?</p>
Highly mannered high-tech R&B from the young Brit, but can it touch the soul too? CD review by Joe Muggs