Welcome Reality | Loppylugs

Submitted by Mike Beaton on 17 February 2013 - 9:43pm

Cover:

Artist:

Nero

album-ID:

a_109

Nationality:

Year:

2 011

Release-year:

0000

Num-of-tracks:

Track-listing:

2808*Doomsday*My Eyes*Guilt*Fugue State*Me and You*Innocence*In the Way*Scorpions*Crush on You*Must Be the Feeling*Reaching Out*Promises*Departure

Length-in-mins:

Nominator:

Bean

meeting-ID:

m_41

Now-num:

Spotify-URL:

7mLdDLzH8tMpan5Xi8tzB3

Grooveshark-URL:

Welcome+Reality/6483726

Short-title:

welcome

nominator-ID:

u_25

Meeting-date:

Tuesday, 27 March 2012

MusicBrainz-URL:

ada6e71b-34bc-4b04-a094-ca37272f4a44

Wikipedia-URL:

Welcome_Reality

Spotify-link-type:

album

Metacritic-URL:

welcome-reality/nero

Discogs-URL:

Nero-Welcome-Reality/master/370583

Allmusic-URL:

welcome-reality-mw0002172956

BBC-URL:

dw4z

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108

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117

reviewers-IDs data

-25-

-13-

-14-

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90

reviewed by

Mike Beaton

A very enjoyable slice of crossover dubstep pop.

6-7-9

5-8

Welcome Reality is a very enjoyable slice of crossover dubstep pop. There’s often bombast, but it’s all done, I think (and hope) with a large slice of self-knowing irony. And, for that matter, it’s fine to produce music which shouts loudly “I’m good” – as long as it is. The album is full of singles which have deservedly done well in the UK charts, such as ‘Innocence’, ‘Me and You’, and ‘Promises’. The album as a whole also stands up very well, though it is arguably over-long. I think one of the reasons Stephens and Ray can do dubstep so well is because it is far from the only music they understand. They both have some degree of classical music training, and they’re also not afraid to heavily sample cheesy 70’s and 80’s pop and disco, with the end result being what Digital Spy blog aptly calls “an almighty racket, but the very best kind of almighty racket”! To my ear, despite the squelchy basslines which dubstep requires, there’s also a strong echo of 70’s electronica such as Oldfield, Jarre and Vangelis. There’s a formula here, of which Stephens and Ray are not the only exponents: put heavy, squelchy bass samples over what is basically catchy pop, preferably with an attractive female vocal on top. But Stephens and Ray (with Alana Watson as their vocalist) do it all very well. It works for me!
72

reviewed by

Neil Hornsey

Down with the dub-step kids

2-11

What a crazy album. A mixture of techno, trance, pop, soul, funk, electro, and apparently - dubstep. It's so in your face that you have to admire it for being so bold - they know what sound they want to achieve and they don't hold back. The vocals won't be to everyone's taste but somehow they just avoid being too cheesy, and I quite enjoy them. Covering Carmen's 1984 hit was very clever, what a great track. The negative points are that it's just too long, two or three of the middle-ish tracks could have been scrapped to make it tighter.
69

reviewed by

Richard Norbury
68

reviewed by

Glyn Lewis

Aimed at the Singles chart, not the Albums chart

2-8-11

3-7-13

Wasn't too sure what I was supposed to do with this when I first heard, it’s way more mainstream than our normal exhibits and beyond my normal points of reference.

I did enjoy the phatt keyboard sounds, the plasticky bits, the stuttery cut up bits and its directness but overall I'm not sure this works well as an album. There are some great moments and I can believe why a few of these worked successfully as singles. This feels more like a bunch of tracks collected together, rather than anything that has the development and shape of an album. All the songs are a bit overlong, especially considering they are pretty uncomplicated pop arrangements, there are too many of them and, given that they are mostly pretty full on, getting to to the end of this from the beginning is really some achievement, although not necessarily a pleasurable one. It's a mix of good and bad – clinical, impressive, uncluttered, cheesy, confident, characterless – on balance I'm still not sure which way I'd go but an interestingly different listen.
64

reviewed by

Matthew Baker

WUB WUBBB WUBBBB

I'm too old for this shit