In one report, reporters confirm that both Doc McKinney and Illangelo are on Kiss Land, this is a gasp of relief for fans of the original three mixtapes! Also confirmed is the album is done, all thats left is final touches to the album. Also mentioned, the track "Belong To The World" was what spawned the concept of Kiss Land.
Check out a snippet from an article, or click Read More to view the whole article and get more in depth information!
Kiss Land sees Tesfaye harness and tighten his sound even further: the production is sounding crisper and less muddy than some of the tracks from House of Balloons, despite Tesfaye apologizing that some parts might sound bogged down in the not-completely-mastered mix. Anyone who has seen Tesfaye live since his first performance back in July 2011 has witnessed the man’s drive for live instrumentation – especially live percussion – and that becomes more apparent on the new record
Following Trilogy - which assembled the mixtapes and managed to shift 289,000 copies, certifying it gold in both the U.S and the musician’s homeland of Canada - Kiss Land has to a lot of expectation to than your standard ‘debut’. Coming along in a year of somewhat radical reinventions, when Daft Punk are lambasted by electronic music aficionados for dabbling with disco and Kanye West makes an album that polarizes the opinions of basically everyone with ears, fans will be pleased to hear that nothing on Kiss Land deviates too far from its trio of predecessors.
That’s not to say the record plays it safe – the aural aesthetic that Abel Tesfaye created and worked through on House of Balloons, Thursday and Echoes Of Silence is instantly recognizable here as one of the album’s successes. Bass-heavy production with help from in-house collaborators Illangelo and Doc McKinney alongside Tesfaye’s signature falsetto sees The Weeknd solidify his stronghold on the current vogue for forward thinking R&B.
As its title might suggest, Kiss Land follows the same thematic lines as Trilogy, with lyrics that ticks the boxes of love, loss and emotionally empty sexual encounters. While House Of Balloons and Thursday were the “party” and “after-party” of Trilogy’s overarching narrative, Kiss Land lies somewhere between those and the inevitable comedown of Echoes Of Silence. While that final mixtape was characterized by its depiction of the darker side of pre-fame, Tesfaye’s sharp ascent to a recognizable personality was always going to open him up to the most extreme of emotions and situations. As he remarks in one line off the album’s title-track: “I went from starin’ at the same four walls for 21 years / To seein’ the whole world in just twelve months”.
Tesfaye’s introduction to the new record – speaking to us from an LA studio while finishing off touches to the album with “just additional recordings and production” left to be added – sees him reiterate that the record’s a “concept album” which originally spawned around lead single ‘Belong To The World’. While he never expands on the finer points of the concept, it’s clear that the split personality present on Trilogy repeats itself on Kiss Land, with themes of hedonism and the toxic effects of overindulgence ever present. Tesfaye’s exaggerated lothario persona finds him mid-anguish; in a kind of hopeless despair that fame isn’t always what you want it to be.
Kiss Land sees Tesfaye harness and tighten his sound even further: the production is sounding crisper and less muddy than some of the tracks from House of Balloons, despite Tesfaye apologising that some parts might sound bogged down in the not-completely-mastered mix. Anyone who has seen Tesfaye live since his first performance back in July 2011 has witnessed the man’s drive for live instrumentation – especially live percussion – and that becomes more apparent on the new record, with the musician clearly influenced by his increasingly frequent live encounters.
Overall, we’d describe what we heard as more cinematic than anything we’ve heard from him to date, with the album’s (presumably) amped-up budget allowing Tesfaye access to a range of instrumentation he uses to expansive effect.
The main characteristic that sets Kiss Land apart from Trilogy, though, is its fluidity – seeming more of a fixed package than any of the individual three mixtapes. House of Balloons, which many regarded as Tesfaye’s strongest release from the Trilogy - for better or worse – lacked some cohesion. While there’s clear leads on Kiss Land like the Portishead-sampling ‘Belong To The World’, the biggest merit listeners are likely to find in the album is its incredible consistency.