The Daily Spin, January 6
Madeon | Adventure
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023. Today is day 6 of 365. Today is our first Favorite Friday - every Friday, you’ll get my review of an album I love. Typically, scores will be higher (for obvious reasons), but more than anything else, this is my opportunity to suggest to you as you have for me.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here.
If you want to suggest an album, good news! You can do so right here!
Album: Adventure (2015)
Artist: Madeon
Link:
Madeon burst onto the scene in the early tens as a fresh-faced teenager, a wizard of electronic composition whose 2011 video and mashup Pop Culture propelled him to international fame. It was clear that this specky little dude was seriously talented - and boy, if Adventure isn’t testament to that.
As his first full-length release, Adventure highlights the best of Leclercq’s production capabilities while never straying too adventurous. It’s highlights from a burgeoning career that is only getting started, with songs like Pay No Mind (with Passion Pit) and You’re On (with Kyan) the stars on a list of songs that features many luminaries in their own rights - Bastille’s Dan Smith is on La Lune, Mark Foster of Foster the People arrives for Nonsense.
It’s evident throughout the album how intertwined the songs are - many of them lead from one into the next, and the songs by and large work so well together that a launchpad project called Adventure Machine was published to allow fans to play with his samples in their own right - and you could still build great music 90% of the time.
Pounding drum beats, rocketing bass lines, and no fear of an electric guitar highlight the musical composition of the album, much of which does fall into a specific niche of mid-10s electronica that doesn’t resonate with 25-year old me as much as it did with 18-year old me - but I’ll still absolutely bang my head along to Imperium.
Where the album misses - rare as it is, is that this format of music doesn’t always lend itself to long listening experiences. Even though Only Way Out and Technicolor are, in some ways, pared down from the rest of the album, they’re still electronic by nature, and it gets heavy on the head after 45-50 minutes of pounding. There’s a certain sameness to some of the licks and production elements too - some of that a result of Leclercq’s developing personal style, some of it a minor mark off on his talent - but at the end of the day, this album is at heart an adventure, as described, and I can’t ask for much more than that.
Rating: 9.2/10
Best Tracks: Pay No Mind; The City; Technicolor
Worst Tracks: Zephyr; Cut the Kid