Introducing Frank Ocean & orange CHANNEL Review
Frank Ocean - orange CHANNEL Review
rating:5
Well, this release is sure fire to make firm Franks foothold on the music industry, on R&B, on fame and on fortune. Its going to go some to confirming Oceans pleasure as not only a unique voice but R&Bs story teller and character actor. With 17 tracks (including interludes), theres a lot on offer to confirm this, though it seems to breeze by hazily once lost in it.
Starting with Start and ending with End, is about all thats conventional about channel ORANGE. Themselves just instrumental bookmarks; one alive with the sounds of a Playstation starting up (reminding me of first playing Spyro on my first Playstation way back when), a gaming adventure sure to ensue, the other fades with memories of the album fluctuating in a swirling, echoed tunnel before closed doors, footsteps and keys signify a return home. Journey over.
In between these bookmarks though, is a book of short stories. Frank is our narrator, sometimes taking on the characters within their tales, sometimes playing himself. Behind these stories is a soundtrack, lovingly written as the stories themselves and immaculately produced.
There are the immediate tracks that, like Novacane and Swim Good before them, are sure to be instant classics and huge singles. Sweet Life being a prime example, as Ocean croons over the top of a backing track that calls back to the soul and funk of old like Stevie Wonder but twisted through a modern lens and filtered through Franks tale of musing on the sweet life of the born to wealth, whilst also portraying the type of person his character is critiquing.
http://youtu.be/aT2V6ODZoZ8
This theme is taken to its conclusion with Super Rich Kids as Ocean fully embodies that shallow, hollow and spoilt inheritant, something like the kids of Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis, but this protagonist knows hes empty and hes searching for that real love. It also features a cameo from Odd Futures phoenix returned Earl Sweatshirt.
Crack Rock is another song with single potential but more subdued. Sounding like lounge jazz meets hip hop as the candid story of a lonely junkie whose lost his love for his addiction has completely hit rock bottom spills over the top of it.
Along with the previously mentioned tracks, theres a good portion of up-tempo and groove, particularly notable as such would be the Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas-dialogue-containing-swaggering groove of Lost and Monks strutting funk that really show that classic influence but just how brilliantly warped and modernised it becomes in Oceans hands.
Though more so than this, channel ORANGE is a far more soulfully focussed album. Exemplified early on with the likes of Thinking Bout You, which features a genius falsetto vocal that brings to mind the potential for brilliance Justin Timberlake used to have back in the day. Its in the albums closing tracks though that Frank really bares his soul, both musically and lyrically he steps into the limelight for these character portrayals as essentially himself.
http://youtu.be/ufbPS8HnZiY
Bad Religion starts accordingly with a haunting church organ as Ocean pleads with his taxi driver to the long way round, in hopes they can both outrun his demons as he pours out his heart, soul and secret to his shrink for the hour. As the lyrics and heart of this song grow, under their titles banner of Bad Religion, it becomes clear why he opened up about his sexuality before the release. Not as the cynics would preach of attention, limelight and headlines to boost sales but because this track (along with Pink Matter and especially Forrest Gump in which he honestly describes his sexual attraction to a male) so openly discusses his sexuality, that there would bound to have been speculation and questioning afterwards. So he took it into his own hands and answered them before they were asked. More than that though, this is a beautiful song about a young man living in secret and broken by a love that cant and wont be reciprocated.
With Pink Matter delves further into this theme, but also opens his pondering out into a wider spectrum of life, meaning and being. Even wondering if life is all just for show, if this world is a self contained fiction for someone elses benefit, but so too coming to realise is pleasure all that matters, and love, lost or otherwise? Its much deeper than your standard turn of R&B lyric, plus it features a spaced out flow from Andre 3000.
http://youtu.be/VyCglfjMOa0
All this without even touching upon the albums centrepiece, Pyramids. The track that was the first release from this album, its first proud display and running in at just seconds shy of 10 minutes it was a brave and unconventional choice. Its an epic by anyones standards, but for R&B its positively biblical and more impressively still never over stays its welcome despite its length. This is mostly down to astounding arrangement of it as it passes between trippy hip hop, through house inflected chart bothering pop, straight up G Funk and a many number of variations on and between. Including a sparse, dark and atmospheric passage with a 70s slow solo section.
Everything else aside, because what matters here is the music, at just 24, Frank Ocean has released an incredibly individual album that shows him to not just be wholly original, but unique and courageous to boot. In talent and voice he stands head and shoulders above his peers. He may even have some considerable say in shaping the sound of pop music to come.