Warm Electronica

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I only own two Madonna CDs. One is I'm Breathless, which is uneven but contains "Vogue" plus some songs that were meaningful to me when I was falling in love with Jay. The other one is Ray of Light, which is one of my favorite CDs of all time. When Madonna released it, she said that she loved electronica but it had one fault, which was that it lacked warmth. She wanted to make an electronica record with warmth, and I think she succeeded with this pulsing, dreamy, soulful disc.

Since then I've added a few more examples of "warm electronica" to my collection. The latest is Heartbreak on Vinyl, by Blake Lewis. Lewis was a contestant on American Idol a few years back, and his signature was beatboxing. I hadn't thought more about him until a year ago when I read a review, in somewhere like EW or the Washington Post, saying that he was actually the most successful---artistically---of all the Idol alumns. Intriguing.

I eventually bought this CD and got around to listening to it this week. I absolutely love it. Not much beatboxing, but a lot of great music. Some songs are more pedestrian dance numbers, but a few soar. I like the first cut, "Heartbreak on Vinyl," which is catchy with unusually good lyrics for a pop tune. I love the short piece called "Superscratchavocalisticturntablelicious" (say that fast, Mary Poppins), which is more like a modern jazz composition than a song. It reminds me a little of "Cantaloop" in its combination of jazzy abstraction and modern vocals. My favorite cut is probably "Our Rapture of Love," which is right up my alley:  rich, heavy, dark, romantic.

Note for Bob:  On this CD, Lewis reminds me quite a bit of Kevin Max on The Imposter.

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