Rezz - Certain Kind Of Magic (Album Review)

Rezz is a female Canadian artist, signed under the deadmau5 label "Mau5trap" and had just released her 2nd full length album "Certain Kind Of Magic". She had released 3 EP's and numerous singles along side the various EP's and albums. If you've never heard of Rezz's style of music the best way to describe it is grungy; psychedelic techno slowed down to 90-100BPM. She has been growing rapidly within the last year winning "Electronic Album of the Year" presented by Juno Awards and stomping the charts hitting 10's of millions of views annually on spotify and other media outlets. Today we are going to discuss her latest album to see if she was able to pull off another hit album.

The album starts off with the track Witching Hour, Sounding very similar to the intro of her track "Purple Gusher" implementing a slow build of a saw layered with percussion and her iconic key range melody giving it an eerie resonance and signifying what the rest of the album may sound like. It only took 30 seconds to break down to the core part of drop with a more simplistic heavy bass which has been more of the "anti-drop" nowadays; trying to simplify the crazy dubstep/EDM drops with more underwhelming saws and basses. To be frank, this sounds much too similar to all of her other tracks. Theres nothing special to this track that sets it apart to any of her other tracks that she has made. She tends to create unique basses and synths that makes the listener identify with her tracks but Witching Hour doesn't hold up too well as a invigorating, unique track. SCORE: 3/10

H E X, the second track with the artist 1788-L on the other hand is a much different story. It was very smart of her to collaborate with this new hot artist because 1788-L comes in with a much harsher bass and deeper lows and fusing with Rezz's slow psychedelic sound is very refreshing. Its high energy. Its fierce. I love every bit of it. Hearing this track gave me a lot of hope for the rest of the album as I hope that she may have turned up the notches a bit and maybe geared away from the same style formatting she has been doing for the past couple of years. SCORE: 8/10

Flying Octopus, after listening to the track a couple of times I need to say this..its bad. It sounds like a demo she may have made 4 years ago before she started getting big and threw it in because fuck it. Its the same throughout the whole track and its just utterly boring. I really wish she could have invested a bit more time into this track rather then CTRL+C one half of the track and CTRL+V it onto the other half. I also want to note that I am not bashing the style of her sound but rather what she does with the style. Lets move on. SCORE: 4/10

Life & Death, the fourth track on the album and possibly the best track within the 8 tracks. It's THUNDERING bass, the cleanest mixes, and finally its groovy underground house fell all combining to just an exhilarating sound. This track sounds this way mostly by another up and coming artist Deathpact which only had released 1 other track ever. Deathpact may just be another artist to look into as his other track "Danger" has a similar catchy deep house vibe. I really love the collaborations that Rezz has been doing because IMO it has been saving of her what could of been stale album into a nice variety of tracks. SCORE: 9/10

Spider On The Moon, much like Witching Hour and Flying Octopus reveals a pattern here. The simplicity, the low/mid range bass and the one shot sound effects throughout the track all give these songs a demo feel. People can argue that "it's the way she makes her music" and i disagree because what these 3 tracks do differently is providing inadequate synths and layers giving it a plain half ass sound. The more I listen to her non-collaborative tracks the more I realize that she so far has unable to independently prove herself on this album to be a strong artist in comparison to the collabs with 1788-L and Deathpact. She may need that extra push to further the development of her sound. SCORE: 4/10

Teleportal with the return of Kotek from her other album Mass Manipulation has together created another solid track. It has a great intro and flips into a gooey bass and creature-like synth effects. While I think their other track together is much superior I believe that Kotek's return was much needed to clay together her bass and slow enveloping atmospheres. Its another high energy track but also easy listening as every layer is balanced and not overpowering each other much like the bass in "H.E.X". SCORE: 6/10

The second to last track on the album "The Crazy Ones" with another collaboration from a guy named 13. It starts out with a haunted side chained laugh-like synth following a really blood pumping breakbeat. Like my god this breakbeat sample is punchy and really gets the listener invested into what is about to come. It follows with a nice mechanical sounding drop with nice, clean lows and crispy claps. I think overall its a nice track, varying itself throughout the whole 4 minutes and finishing off with an even more adrenaline fueled bass near the end of the track. SCORE: 6/10

Toxin is the final track on the album featuring a singer who she has been following closely on Soundcloud named Fytch. This track has more of a live feel with more organic drums and hi hats mixing in with the vocalist. I think she has done right with bringing him into the album. Its different and I like that. I love that it still sounds like Rezz because while the style is so different then what she usually makes, the dark melodies and synths flow within the whole track feeling very experimental but still including that classic Rezz sound we know and love. While the vocals fail to have any range the low tones of Fytch seem to work well. I do think in the end its a track that is again experimental and I don't see Rezz working on this style again. It doesn't knit itself very well to the rest of the album and honestly would have worked better off as a single. I do like the track but it's placement is questionable. SCORE: 6.5/10

All in all, this was a sub par album from the up and coming artist Rezz and I believe it had much potential. There were some great tracks but also many others keeping the score down. I think this album won't stop her upbringing but I do expect more from her in the future. ~

This is just my opinion! Let me know what you thought of the review and give your thoughts on what you think differently!

ＦＩＮＡＬ ＳＣＯＲＥ：5.8/10

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