Erika De Casier - Sensational

[Sebastian Cobb]

I've been waiting for this to come out for a while, I really liked Essentials and there have been a couple of preview tracks on Bandcamp for a while.

There's a Guardian article here where the reviewer compares her to Rina Sawayama, I can see why in the sense that they both do music that is a callback to music from 20 years ago, but I'm not sure it's really the best comparison since there's been some other very good, innovative work that channels 90's/00's RnB but is excellent in it's own right of late (like Sudan Archives and Jamilla Woods).

Anyhow the thing's fucking excellent.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/4nsap9FkZQJLSbQP8I9one?si=ecwSOIjJTge1nu_ToLjERQ
Youtube: No Butterflies no Nothing / Drama
Bandcamp: https://erikadecasier.bandcamp.com/music

[Sebastian Cobb]

I realise I didn't put much effort into selling this... but I've been listening to it quite regularly for a few weeks now and am not sick of it.

It might just be me, because I've not really seen it get much acknowledgement anywhere but it's great if you like late 90's/early 2000's rnb/garage.

Busy is such a banger.

In another thread it was mentioned burial sounds thin these days, for pop throwback she really knows how to put in deep basslines that aren't just boomy.

[The Mollusk]

Looking forward to this, got it downloaded for the commute today. Will report back!

[The Mollusk]

Actually was not massively feeling this. I had high hopes from the opening track but save for a couple other songs I found it kinda drab. I love the 90s RnB revival (can't get enough of those chunky overproduced snare hits), and she's got a great voice, but there's too much of a sullen late night atmosphere to the majority of the record and I found myself losing interest. If the album structure was flipped - largely bangers with 2 or 3 slow jams - it would work a lot better but here in this opposite format I sort of kept waiting for something more to happen and it rarely did. Maybe it's just my bad attention span but I couldn't vibe with this I'm afraid. "Busy" is great though I'll give you that.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I quite liked the atmosphere but fair enough if you didn't. I didn't really have to put any effort into liking it and was grinning like an idiot from the off.

She had another album before this, Esssentials, the strength of which got her singed to 4AD. Sensational seems a bit more focused, like she had a clearer vision of what she wanted to do. I'll be interested to see where she goes with it, I think she's only about 22!

It was only by chance I really discovered her, as she just happened to do a little live session after Yazz Ahmed on a boiler room livestream at the start of lockdown.