Album "XSCAPE"

Zitat von Indigo

Das Titelbild ist ja grandios, muß ich auch mal sagen. Da hat sich jemand mal richtig Mühe gegeben und nachgedacht. Alleine es künstlerisch so hinzukriegen Michael als toten Künstler quasi aus der Ewigkeit des Universums halb ins Diesseits schauen zu lassen. Grandios. Gleichzeitig wird endlich mal mit einem "aktuellerem" Bild gearbeitet, quasi der Michael den man noch in etwa die letzten Jahre kannte, statt sich immer auf die frühen 80er zu berufen. Desweiteren hat man mit dem Sternenbild die nostalgische Zuflucht in die Victory Zeit gefunden. Masterpiece.

Finde es auch echt toll! Da steckt vieles drin, nur die Lippen sind etwas weiblich

Das Pre-Order-Album auf i-tunes von der Deluxee-Version zeigt 17 songs und 2 Videos:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/xscape/id850697616

Und
von Kevin Hughes, engl. Radiomoderator
Kevin Hughes ‏@Popprince6
Std.#Xscape A Place With No Name... #AllAboutThoseMJharmonies
Amazing.. pic.twitter.com/FbZirqcscH

Kevin Hughes ‏@Popprince ·9 Std.

#Xscape Still buzzing from what I heard tonight.. Do You Know Where Your
Children Are. Wow! #MJ pic.twitter.com/VgmezdDido

hm.... also der Bonus track ist bei den originals mit drauf. das ist gut.
dann.... es gibt keinen Gänsehaut song... also bitte lass es einer werden!!!!!!!!

Zitat von moontown

hm.... also der Bonus track ist bei den originals mit drauf. das ist gut.
dann.... es gibt keinen Gänsehaut song... also bitte lass es einer werden!!!!!!!!

woher willst du das wissen?

Zitat von Xscape2040

Ich weiss wir haben das Album noch nicht, aber denkt ihr es ist wahrscheinlich, dass wir einige Monate nach Release ein "Repackage" bekommen wie es heute viel gemacht wird? Mit z. B. 1-2 zusätzlichen Songs, und es würde nicht zuletzt die Verkäufe steigern.

Würde mich sehr wundern. Aber dagegen hätte ich mal sowas von nichts.

ooops, stimmt, hab mich vertan... das weiss man noch nicht

War Chicago nicht eine Art Vorgänger von Smooth Criminal?
She Was Lovin’ Me und Love Never Felt So Good hören sich irgendwie bekannt an... Kennt man die schon irgendwoher?
Die anderen sind nicht "neu", ich bin aber auf die Überarbeitungen gespannt. Kann's kaum erwarten

Timbaland:

Zitat von Duff-Man

She Was Lovin’ Me und Love Never Felt So Good hören sich irgendwie bekannt an... Kennt man die schon irgendwoher?

Love Never Felt So Good ist als Piano Demo (glaube mit Paul Anka?) geleakt.

Aus dem MJJC:

Opinions from the listening party from UK website Pop Justice:

Zitat

wow. I went feeling very sceptical, as I always am about posthumous albums but bloody hell I was surprised.
It's the album that Michael would've released in 2014 if he was still around. Some brilliant tracks and standout tracks were:
Xscape
Slave
Do You Know Where Your Children Are
Place With No Name - samples Way You Make Me Feel
but all eight tracks were great…

Alles anzeigen

Zitat

I was going to write almost the exact same post - it's a very strong
album and much better than a posthumous release gets to be. You can
definitely hear the Timbaland influences in some of the tracks, but
they've definitely done a good job of retaining the authentic feel
while making it modern. Some similarities to the 20/20 Experience and
Bruno Mars, etc,. but then you remember quickly that these songs are
what inspired those albums and not vice versa.

Do You Know... is one of the strongest choruses on the album, and Xscape
feels very fresh. Slave To The Rhythm is a huge tune, but could have
used a bit more oomph - some upcoming remixes should take care of
that.

Impressed and pleasantly surprised!

Alles anzeigen

Zitat

Two other tracks were Blue Gangster and Loving You… both were great.
Some people said the tracks sounded similar to each other at times
but I would call it cohesiveness rather than repetitive. There is only
8 tracks - but you knew that already, right?

Shame they're not just dropping it on iTunes tomorrow, it would get a
lot of press especially with it being April Fools Day. Perhaps they know
how good it is and are expecting rave reviews.

There was an air of surprise at the quality but I think that's because
of the previous album and also the fact people like Timbaland were
involved who can be quite hit and miss.

I am not a Bruno Mars fan AT ALL but I could easily imagine him
releasing some of these tracks and having huge success, just a shame
Michael's unlikely to get much airplay.

Alles anzeigen

Zitat

I imagine these tracks will be brand new to the wider public though.
The production and overall sound is so different to the demos too.

Also was delighted that there doesn't seem to be many parts with 'extra
vocals' from impersonators or session singers apart from one or two
small parts.

Always thought if they needed extra vocals they should've got a sister, brother or even 3T.

Zitat

The first track on the album was Love Never Felt So Good, very breezy production.

I agree that there was definitely surprise in the room at the quality of
the songs, and the enthusiasm went crescendo after the first couple
songs - the latter half of the album seemed more modern and punchy.
Couldn't single out a bad track, but I would say track 2 (forgot the
name) and maybe 3 were the weaker ones.

No tracklist coming for a little while either! But I'm sure it will be
all but clear from the inevitable blog reviews over the coming week.
Slave to the Rhythm sounds exactly like the snippet in that Xperia ad -
wish it had a bit more of a kick to it as the backing track is pretty
much constant the whole way through, but it's still a massive jam.

Alles anzeigen

Zitat

This album SHOULD sell by the bucketload but i'm not sure if it actually will, especially as only eight tracks.

Zitat

I do agree it should sell very well, and seems the plan is really to
go full blitz with the album across several platforms, so I think it
has a decent chance of doing so.

Michael Jackson new album Xscape: first listen
Bernadette McNulty gives her verdict on the forthcoming Michael Jackson
album Xscape, a collection of eight 'new' songs featuring production by
Timbaland

Was the surprise news that Michael Jackson was about to release an album
nearly five years after his death inspired by Kate Bush’s return? I like to
think of him hanging out in the never-ending Neverland that is the afterlife
and on hearing the news that an Eighties chart contemporary had sold-out 22
nights at the Hammersmith Apollo in 15 minutes, wanted to remind people how
in that summer of 2009, he was about to embark on a 50-date run at the O2.
Take that Bush I can hear him saying.

Not that I imagine Jackson to be bitter about his eternal confinement across
the river Styx (I’m not sure Hades provides many recording studios) – but I
see him more as fiercely competitive and as committed to being a singing
superstar as he was in life.

And it was exactly those qualities that I was reminded of on the first listen
for his new posthumous album, called Xscape, set to be released in May.

Appropriately, even the setting for the playback had a foot in the past. In
the basement of a swanky Knightsbridge hotel, drinks flowed amongst the
smoke mirrored walls and white leather couches as the label chief and DJ
Trevor Nelson pumped up the crowd. It was as if the economic implosion of
the record industry over the last fifteen years had never happened, let
alone the fact that the stars of today, from Kanye West to Beyonce, are more
likely to just throw their albums on the internet overnight than do anything
as recherche as arrange a listening party.

Still, in the reality of the present, bouncers confiscated our phones and more
bizarrely, the record was played through the sound system via the brand of
mobile the album is sponsored by. Apparently this was to give us an elevated
sonic experience but it sounded fairly similar to the clanging, bass-heavy
din of any overamplified iPhone speaker. Not that anything felt particularly
sacrilegious about this corporate alliance. Again, Jackson was an early and
enthusiastic pioneer of hooking up with global brands; I doubt he would have
been doing anything different now.

What the quality of the sound couldn’t diminish though was the pristine,
front-and-centre presence of Jackson’s voice in the mix. The singer’s
posthumous releases, particularly the 2010 compilation Michael, have
ironically only served to make Jackson feel more dead, the lifeless songs
lurching and thudding with the grace of Frankenstein’s monster, animated
purely by brute studio (and commercial) force rather than organic impulses.

Xscape at least sounds more like a labour of love and with only eight songs, a
judiciously edited and cohesive album rather than an endless memory-stick
jumble of offcuts. Former US X Factor judge LA Reid has overseen the
process, working his way through four decades of unused recordings that
Jackson has left behind. Employing a premier league team of top name pop
producers, Reid has called the reboot ‘contemporizing’ Jackson’s songs, a
euphemism that even Bernard Matthews might balk at when faced with the
processed nature of these recordings. But the balance often feels quite
subtle and even-handed between the original song and the new styles of
orchestration and production.

From fashionable-again orchestral disco and propulsively lithe electro to
Rodney Jerkin’s trademark militarised beats, you can still hear fully-formed
Jackson songs there – even more striking in an age where RnB and pop has
largely become a collage of chants and breakdowns. I just haven’t hadn’t
heard this many words in a pop song for ages, let alone proper verses,
bridges and choruses.

The only problem was that those verses, bridges and choruses made up songs
that ultimately didn’t make the final cut of his classic albums. Sometimes
it’s interesting to see the rough cuts and working out of an artist, to
trace your finger along the arduous and often confused process by which
something is made from nothing. Incredible pop music though tends to emerge
much more fitfully and often between the undocumented interplay between
different people.

These songs all sounded like prototypes – that one a bit like Wanna Be
Starting Something, the next, a distant cousin of The Way She Makes Me Feel,
and if anything, they start to reveal some of the limited templates that
Jackson worked with: the Jackson 5 good-time funk disco number; the bashful
choirboy ballad; the angry, despairing epic. The lyrics, perhaps the
critical thing in the magic of the final Jackson mix, often so strange and
mantra-like, sounded on these songs forgettable generic, bar one that asked,
Michael Gove-like, if you knew where your children were at midnight if they
weren’t at home.

But it was still a kind of wonder to hear that man-woman voice so utterly
unlike any other, rude with vitality and power, flying through the octaves
while simultaneously punctuating itself with those inimitable yelps and
shrieks. And the producers seem to have responded in kind, digging out some
of their most glistening beats and loops to burnish and embroider Jackson’s
singing.

Perhaps because this record does sound like it was at least made with some
kind of love it felt quite poignant. What album would Jackson be making now
I wondered? Would he still be stuck in the stylistic rut of his final work
or would he have been rescued by Daft Punk and created some fresh miracle?
The record producers sound like they are asking themselves the same
questions, if not arriving at any answer.

In the room, a strange portrait of Jackson hung down over us, most of his head
clamped silently in a glitter dust trumpet while his eyes peer over the top,
both mournful and defiant. The pregnant lady next to me rubbed her tummy.
“The baby must love this,” she said, “they are going wild.” With Jackson,
life obviously goes on.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cul…-Xscape-first-listen.html

Zitat

Not that I imagine Jackson to be bitter about his eternal confinement across
the river Styx (I’m not sure Hades provides many recording studios) [...]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cul…-Xscape-first-listen.html

Friss Scheiße, du dumme Sau!

Neuer Spot:

#Xscape Still buzzing from what I heard tonight.. Do You Know Where Your Children Are. Wow! #MJ pic.twitter.com/VgmezdDido
(Kevin Hughes)
https://twitter.com/Popprince/statuses/450738170226032640

Michael Prince ‏@MichaelPrinceMD 20h
“@Epic_Records:
Thrilled to announce Xscape, a NEW ALBUM of music by
@MichaelJackson, Many of us wanted Xscape on Invinsible- Awesome
song!

James Barr ‏@imjamesbarr 17h
Can't wait to hear the new #MJ
album tonight #Xscape so lucky to be at the album playback
pic.twitter.com/fYpmLqXb6C

James Barr ‏@imjamesbarr 14h
I LOVED
#Xscape... Probably the best we've heard since #Dangerous! The first track is
amazing @michaeljackson

James Barr ‏@imjamesbarr 13h
I feel so
lucky to be one of the first ppl in the world to have heard Michael Jackson's
new album It totally lives up to the hype #xscape