Sunday Songs 2015: Alesso's Sweet Escape and Zedd's Addicted To a Memory

WEEK TWENTY-THREE PART A: ALESSO - SWEET ESCAPE

This week is a little bit different! I could have split these two into different weeks, but I've had both of them on the blog before so I'll combine them. Why am I featuring musicians again at all? Because both Alesso and Zedd put out new albums this month, and they're both pretty great!
Alesso released his first LP, Forever. I'll be honest - not unilaterally his best stuff. There's some great gems on the album, but especially his choice of singles is a bit disappointing - he did not make the best use of Tove Lo on Heroes, and Payday is the opposite of what originally attracted me to Alesso. In general, the album takes a more EDM-powered tact, rather than use the trance inflections in a lot of his work. In general, Heroes is a fluke; Alesso knows how to handle vocalists, and needs to do so more often. Under Control (with Calvin Harris and Hurts) and his remix of If I Lose Myself are two of the best songs on the album by a while, but they've also been in circulation for almost a year. That sound, the intro track is a really good lead-in to Payday.

WEEK TWENTY-THREE PART B: ZEDD - ADDICTED TO A MEMORY

Zedd has the exact opposite problem that Alesso has - he needs to lay off the vocalists. He just can't manage them! They're repetitive, uninspired, and seemingly there just because they're "supposed to be" in the modern dance world. Seriously Zedd, it's okay to just be a kick-ass producer of beats! You don't have to include lyrics! It's really not the vocalists' faults - Hayley Williams and Foxes and Bahari are great vocalists and were kinda wasted on their songs. Despite that, Addicted To A Memory is a great song and the back half is great.
(I will note that he worked really well with Selena Gomez, I Want You To Know actually elevates her performance, and I say this as someone who actually likes Selena!)

Project Update:
I play the Example of Play session tomorrow for Legend of the Elements! It's exciting. I'm also currently remaking the cover to stretch around the spine and back. I'm also painting it! Watercolor and acrylic. I'm, uh, not a painter, but I wasn't really vector artist before this project either, so I think it's going well!
I played Shining Void last week and it taught me some things! this game is going toward a revision.
I haven't started on Learning Pixel Art 2nd Edition yet, that's in the information-gathering stage.

End Recording,
Ego