After the release of the first posthumous single "S.O.S" on April 11, after a long wait of two months, electronic music lovers around the world finally ushered in the legendary DJ Avicii's third full-length album "TIM", the posthumous work named after him (formerly known as Tim Burgelin Tim Bergling).
The cover of tim, the last album named after Avicz's original name.
Avicii was one of the most creative DJ producers in the wave of electronic music commercialization in the early 2000s. He has excellent melodic writing skills, which makes his electronic music works more accessible to the general public. The excellent timbre aesthetic ability allows music lovers to appreciate the charm of electronic music.
In 2013, he boldly integrated Blue Grass into Progressive House, an electronic music genre, and produced the world-hit single "Wake Me Up" — the most played song ever played by streaming software Spotify in 2013, and Avicii took the mainstreaming of electronic dance music to a new level. He himself has become a trend symbol, even the hit singles have been symbolized by him, such as the American singer Mike Posner's song "I Took A Pill In Ibiza" has a lyric that is "To show Avicii I was cool" (just to make Avicii think I am super cool). Since then, genres such as Tropical House, Future House, and Future Bass have taken turns, and electronic music has become the mainstream of popular music of this century.
According to the 2019 data of the IMS Business Report, electronic music dance music ranks third in the global listening genre, after pop and rock. In the process of mainstreaming electronic dance music, Aivich's work has been criticized by some traditional dance music producers for being too market-oriented, but no one can deny his creativity. Deadmau5, the first troll in the electronic music industry, has criticized Avich many times, but he also has to admit, "Apart from the banter, no one can deny his achievements regarding modern dance music, and I am proud of him." ”
Avic in the show. Photo/Visual China
However, while electronic dance music was making its way on the mainstream stage, Avicz suffered a commercial setback — the second full-length album didn't achieve the expected commercial success. By this time, the love of electronic music had shifted to the Tropical House. Even Skrillex, the leader of Brotherstep (a musical style), transitioned to the Tropical House, producing the hit single "Sorry" for Justin Bieber. And Avicii is still insisting on his exploration in a dizzying variety of electronic music genres. This exploration is clearly visible in his posthumous work TIM.
"TIM" was not written by Avic alone, but was compiled by other musicians with the material provided by his previous demos (samples), audio tracks, emails, text messages, and related manuscripts. The single "S.O.S", released on April 11, only Drop (referring to the most explosive passage in the song) and the vocals are already produced by Avic, the single "Tough Love" released on May 9 is 80% complete, and the album "Heaven" has been ready to demo... Due to the different music sources and degree of completion, it brings a lot of difficulties to the unity of the album. For the sake of album consistency, the previously critically acclaimed unreleased single "We Burn" was not included in the new album.
Even so, we can see the evolution of the late stages of avic's musical career in the fragments of Avic's music. The slowing down of the songs on the album and the importance of acoustic instruments continued from the mini-album AVĪCI (01). Many people jokingly call this pigeon flavor much less (Avic nicknamed "Ace Pigeon"), but because later in his career, his transformation was not widely disseminated.
Cover of the mini-album AVĪCI (01).
The band Vargas & Lagola in TIM co-produced three songs, "Piece Of Mind", "Tough Love", and "Excuse Me Sir", whether it is the violin in "Tough Love" or the guitar in the other two, continuing the idea of "Friend of Mine" original instrument dominating "AVĪCI (01)". "Friend of Mine" is an adaptation of drop from the unpublished electronic dance song "Unbreakable". The album's other three songs, Heart Upon My Sleeve, Heaven, and Hold the Line, were produced by rock bands Imagine Dragons, Coldplay, and ARIZONA, respectively, and also reflected Ivych's influence on rock and roll— Coldplay was his favorite band as a teenager.
The entire album is structured around the theme of life and love. Both "I get robbed of all my sleep/As my thoughts begin to bleed/I'd let go but I don't know how" in S.O.S or "I think I just died/And went to heaven" in Heaven revolve around the theme of life and love. The modalities of music changed from the early joyful major to a mixture of various modes of music, also to fit the theme of life and love. Due to the large number of participants on this album, the establishment and unification of the theme is quite necessary, which allows all participants to have the same goal and better exert their creativity. All the proceeds from the work were donated to suicide prevention organizations, mental illness relief and ecological environmental protection organizations, indicating that the partners did not forget their original attitude.
Today, the homogenization of production has caused the trend of electronic dance music to decline early, which makes us miss the genius who helped this music genre kick the mainstream, and Aivich's posthumous work takes us back to the creative era of 10 years ago.
Moriko □ (Music Critic)
Beijing News Editor Wu Longzhen Proofreader Liu Baoqing