Review: The-Drum – Heavy Liquid EP
The-Drum – Heavy Liquid EP (2012) [Audraglint] // Grade: B+
I’ve been obsessed with Chicago’s The-Drum since a pal pointed me toward “Run You”, and latest EP Heavy Liquid just stokes the fire. Released by the tightly curated (and generally awesome) Audraglint, Heavy Liquid is the duo’s critical mass: A willowy explosion of R&B beats, swaggering atmosphere, hot hot hooks. It’s not the end all be all of what The-Drum can do — flip through their catalogue and it’s pretty clear these producers have the chops to go even further, darker, harder — but it’s a severely great glimpse of the here and now.
Look, it’s like this: Think of The-Drum as a bridge between what was and what will be. Heavy Liquid may glance back at 90s R&B, 80s house, indigenous rhythms — even early synth pioneers like Kraftwerk and Daphne Oram — but it’s got an undeniably futuristic vibe. Tracks like “Night Driving” and “Euthanasia” swirl and sway with spaced-out tones, this sort of ominous sci-fi atmosphere that lurches with foreboding, while “Icy Tropics” and “Omar” go harder on the bedroom-ready R&B kick. Because really, all intellectualizing aside, The-Drum are making music you can have sex to. Whether it’s sex in 2012, or some futuristic space-station sex, I don’t know — but these guys probably have you covered either way.
February 22nd, 2012 at 4:39 pm
why is almost every record given a B on this site? why bother assigning letter grades if it’s just going to be the same every time?
February 23rd, 2012 at 2:51 am
There are 3 grades of B, which to me cover a generous margin in defining albums that fall between OK to good to great.
I’ll concede that if we’re going average out all the reviews since we started doing reviews on the Bloglin then it most definitely falls within one of those 3 grades. But I don’t understand why that’s really so surprising? We only do 2 reviews a day and It wasn’t until recently that labels, and PR firms started treating the Bloglin seriously as a media outlet and sending us records regularly to reviews. So the bulk of the reviews and publicity has always gone to records we’ve personally hunted down instead of filling a quota with extra reviews of whatever was sent in. And usually if we were hunting something down, it’s because it probably stood to reason it might be something we might like.
On the whole review albums are assigned (again those assignments are based on what we want to profile, be it good or bad with our limited space) AND chosen by the reviewers themselves. And when a reviewer chooses themselves to write about an album, they tend to want to write about things they like more than they hate. Go figure, right? We have however cracked down on the willy-nilly free for all for grading things with “As” that I always found a problem.
So unless you have some fault with THIS record getting the grade it got, I’m not sure what your real grievance is. If it’s that you’re having trouble understanding a 13 letter based grading system, and as such think anything with a B means we’re saying “absolutely incredible, future classic!” – which given your comment, you might – then here you go:
A+ = 10
A- = 9.5
A = 9
B+ = 8.5
B = 8
B- = 7
C+ = 6
C = 5
C- = 4
D+ = 3
D = 2
D- = 1
F = 0
The gaps in-between numbers? Well that what the actual review is there for to make clear that grey area. So if our average grade is between 70-85% out of a 100% total, is that really so bad or unreasonable when currently our preference (which I always assumed was clear to the readers of the Bloglin) to use our limited space and resources to profile the music we enjoy? I don’t think so.
February 23rd, 2012 at 1:46 pm
Shut the fuck up!!! You sound like a little bitch. You need to focus on making quality product, not writing over drawn reponses.
February 23rd, 2012 at 2:29 pm
B’s are a way to say hey I really like this music at the moment but don’t want to overhype it with an A. Hence, all Bloglin reviews are given B’s and higher, unless it’s a major label release, then it’s given a C. You haven’t figured that out by now?
February 23rd, 2012 at 7:40 pm
Over drawn responses are my quality product.