video review: 'hopelessness' by anohni

By the nine hells, this record was unbearable, only salvaged from being lower thanks to one or two good songs. Let's hope that our next record will be better...

Oh, wait, it's Blake Shelton. Eh, whatever, stay tuned!

album review: 'hopelessness' by anohni

If I were to ask you what are the genres that bring up politics the most, what would be your answers?

Well, if I were to guess, you'd probably start with punk, and then follow with hip-hop. Maybe you'd bring up folk or funk or soul, or in a pinch you might mention alternative country or metal. Odds are you would not mention electronic music or synthpop, and there's a reason for that. In the latter case, it's fairly obvious: if you look at the historical legacy of synthpop, most of it tended towards weird abstraction or flighty dance floor jams, and while of course there were exceptions, they were not the rule. With electronic music... okay, you can make more of an argument when you consider certain underground scenes, particularly in inner city Detroit and Chicago where you'd find acts like Jlin, or you might mention acts like The Knife, which got very political on their 2013 album Shaking The Habitual to very mixed results, at least for me. 

So what about an artist like Anohni? If you don't recognize the name, don't worry, she's only been performing under it for this record, previously leading the band Antony and the Johnsons. Now keep in mind that Antony and the Johnsons are a baroque pop group that's received a ton of critical acclaim - mostly for good reason - but this is also her first album in six years and her first real venture into electronic music. Fortunately, she pulled in some heavy hitters to help her, the first being Hudson Mohawke, who is most well-known for working with Kanye West. The second is Oneotrix Point Never, a critically acclaimed experimental electronica musician who, yes, I know i need to hear more of his stuff, it's in my ever-expanding backlog. In other words, we could very well have another situation like Anna Meredith, the fusion of electronic and classical music... but on the other hand many of the statements Anohni made before this record implied this was to be a much more political work. Okay, that's a loaded implication, but I figured it'd probably be worth a few listens, so I checked out Hopelessness - what did I find?