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20 JANUARY19,2015 ARTS&FEflTURE' pj...,;. .51 THEBLUEBANNER.NET % /’ " ^•.H' • .i£,\ 'jX’* .V--’^ Experimental electronica artist Grimes curates, shares vision of pop music's future PHILLIP WYATT A&F Staff Writer pwyatt@unca.edu Canadian artist Claire Boucher, better known by her moniker Grimes, released her highly anticipated fourth album “Art Angels” in November. The 14-track album received immedi ate critical praise, landing on the 2015 top 10 albums lists of publications like Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Slant, the New York Times and Billboard. As a die-hard Grimes fan, “Art Angels” quickly became my favorite album of 2015. Her unique style of lo-fi goth pop mixed with her signature wispy, falsetto vocals captured my attention and abruptly stole my heart forever. Grimes breakthrough hit album, “Vi sions,” became an overnight sensation in 2012. The artist’s adamant opposition to hard drugs spawn from the album’s recording sessions. She created the entire album in her apartment during a drug-fueled, three-week span with little sleep or communication with the outside world. , Boucher is completely self-sufficient, exercising total control of her music. She records and mixes her own materi al, playing every instrument featured in her songs. She even directs her music videos and creates art used for her sin gle and album covers. After touring the world in support of “Visions,” Grimes seized the opportu nity to learn how to really perform and sing live, she said. Last summer I had the pleasure of seeing Grimes open for Lana Del Ray in Charlotte. The sea of teenage girls clad in high-waisted cutoff shorts, crop tops and floral headbands had no clue how to react to Boucher’s eclectic and unusual sound. My friends and I were seemingly the only people singing, dancing and actually enjoying ourselves amongst the horde of Coachella wannabes. Grimes easily stole the show from Lana with her barbaric, high-energy per formance as the audience gawked with wide-eyes of disbelief and confusion. Even if the majority of the crowd was oblivious to Grimes’ mere existence, she seemed unscathed, sharing her creative arrangements of both organic and unnat ural sounds with a smile on her face. In 2014, Grimes released “Go,” a song initially written for Rihanna. After she rejected the song, Boucher decided to release it as her own. The track received significant backlash from outraged fans who believed Grimes had sold out, succumbing to the sound of mainstream music with her dubstep-heavy song. Consequently, she scrapped her entire fourth album and started over. “Art Angels” begins with “laughing and not being normal,” a majestic yet dark track brimming with violin and piano. The intro tune perfectly depicts Grimes’ evolution in music, straying away from arranging songs exclusively in GarageBand by adding notes played from tangible instruments such as gui tar, drums, piano and violin. The track “California” serves as com mentary on Grimes recent move from Montreal Read more on next page
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