Kaskade
Atmosphere Album Review
Ultra Records
Released September 10, 2013
Genre: House, Progressive House, Electro House, Deep House, EDM
Atmosphere is the newest and seventh album from arguably the best DJ/Producer to come out of the United States. With the EDM scene dominated by wild bass drops and mammoth synth chords, I’m honestly refreshed by this album. Kaskade sticks to his guns and his origins with a calmer house style of music with soaring vocals. He has a wide range of guest vocalists from Project 46 to Lights to even himself.
The album starts out with “Last Chance” featuring the previously mentioned Project 46. This track is an amazing start to the album. It shows a growth towards more of a progressive feel in his style, but the meaningful lyrics and style of Project 46 keep the song very Kaskade-esque. Introducing the main synth theme in the very beginning, the lyrics and chords progress together, growing until the drop. This first little taste test of the album is pretty good and leaves me with an appetite that can only be satisfied with some more Kaskade.
“Why Ask Why” (featuring Late Night Alumni) calms the album down a little retaining more of a plain house feel. The vocals continue the tone that Kaskade and all of us know and love, the vocals rising and falling in spectacular fashion. The beginning of the song begins simply with an echo-ey guitar that reverberates through the whole album and during the second verse he introduces a piano that is the centerfold of the album. With a precedent set, he moves on a changes things up.
The album also has three in-flight tracks spaced throughout the album that I want to cover together. They each have abbreviations of different airports and are related to the connotations that each city brings. He starts with “MIA to LAS” which is a deep house track with a sexy bass that really takes the listener back to the roots of Kaskade and his music. The next track is “LAX to JFK” starts out with a sensual percussion line with a little strings in the background with a sudden intro of a sort of 90’s synth line in the middle of the song that has an outro just as sudden. The whole song sounds nice and funky, via his use of different effects and the overall theme. The final in-air track is “SFO to ORD”. This track is a time machine into the past, describing his path from Chicago, where he grew up and where there is a rich house history, to San Fran where his career and style took off as an artist. The track has a solemn sentimental feeling that is a little surprising but is a good way to round out this three song series.
“Nobody Knows Who We Are”. Lights. If you ever saw the EDC Las Vegas preview for 2013 you got a nice look at this track, and honestly, I was excited when I heard it, knowing that it would be an amazing addition to his next album. I was surprised though. The progressive track I listened to on repeat during EDC was not in the album. What was in the album was a stripped down version. Calm piano starting out, the only parallel between the album version and the original single is the vocals by Lights. I was astounded by this track, and more importantly I was stuck listening to it over and over. The piano, the voice, and the string section introduced during the chorus meld into a perfect combination, perfectly following the flow of this album. The song starts out solemn and sad, but the piano and string chords slowly transition to a more positive tone, just as the lyrics gain positivity and life. Overall, this a track that can only surpassed in greatness, at least in this album, by the title track which is soon to come.
Becky Jean Williams is next in line for vocalists, bringing us “Feelin’ the Night”. This song is a nice touch after “Nobody Knows Who We Are”, bringing a more upbeat and progressive feel to the album. The lyrics are great, showing us the feeling and meaning that Kaskade’s lyrics always bring to the table along with a nice beat and synthetic beginning. The songs has a nice progression and a surprisingly large rise to be followed by a rather disappointing drop. Although follows Kaskade’s style of a calmer house without major vacillations in intesntity, the drop itself doesn’t seem too fitting to the track. The chords work, but they just seem out of place, not really following the way the track seemed to be heading. Luckily for Kaskade, years of experience allow for his superior production to save the song.
“Take Your Mind Off It” is classic Kaskade. A deep bass leads the listener through the song in a very satisfactory way. The only thing that seems to be missing is a vocalist, but it really doesn’t seem like it is lacking a major vocal line. He substitutes it for a male voice repeating the title of the song in a monotonic manor. It is a good segue to the title track of the album, and though it might live in the shadow of it, it is still a great song, serving as the calm before the storm that will build up the anticipation towards Atmosphere.
Unlike most albums, this one’s title track truly shines as its epitome. “Atmosphere” is genius. It starts out with a lone piano, just like “Nobody Knows Who We Are”, and then comes Kaskade. Very few major DJs or producers have ever contributed vocals to their own album. Not only does this break new ground in the EDM scene, but it adds that much more meaning to the already deep lyrics that characterize this album, as they are coming straight from the man himself. To accompany the brilliant chords and lyricism that build up the beginning of the song, the percussion comes in slowly and surely with just as much finesse and grace. The bass fits the track like a glove and when the snare comes in, the song takes a turn towards the highly anticipated drop. The main synthetic theme is introduced with the snare in the background where you can barely notice it, but then the drop hits and it blows up into a grand anthem, the cherry on top of this delectable ice cream Sunday that defines its whole taste and leaves the palate satisfied. The song signifies a little bit of a change in direction for Kaskade, but I love it, and it still seems Kaskade even with the progressive nature of the song
The next songs bring the tone of the album back to its core. Classy, expressive vocals (via School of Seven Bells and Zip Zip through the night) are back and ready to lead “Missing You” and “Something Something”, two house tracks. Calming the progression of the album, “Missing You” is led by a nice bass line that follows the vocals very well. Percussion comes in to bring a more upbeat feeling to the latter portion of the track which leads well into “Something Something”, which starts out with an upbeat guitar. Remember that guitar from “Why Ask Why”? Well, it’s back. If you’ve ever heard of Young the Giant the guitar sounds oddly similar. Anyways, the track actually takes on a R&B feel for a little when the bass and rhythm come in, but then the song goes house with a very clever alternative feel, though that might be a personal opinion since I am a fan of alternative. Overall I think that it is a very well done track. It doesn’t seem too much like classic EDM, but the signature of Kaskade is there, and the R&B along with alternative make me very happy, indeed.
The last two songs are even calmer, with ethereal chords and vocals, courtesy of Haley and Deborah Fotheringhamg. The simplicity of Kaskade’s style comes out in these two tracks, the songs stripped of any major synths or percussion but just having the organ in “Floating” (a very appropriate title for the tone of the track) and the final morsel of piano to close out the album in “How it is”. “Floating” is very conservative, but after it, “How it is” comes out with a little bit of percussion that keeps the song tasteful but calm, all the while retaining the style of music Kaskade has produced since his first album. A great closer to the album, “How It Is” is the door slowly being closed on Atmosphere.
7.8
Fav: Atmosphere, Nobody Knows Who We Are, Last Chance
Worst: Floating, MIA to LAS
